


Running

by sydneyknight



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-07-28
Updated: 2013-12-31
Packaged: 2017-12-21 09:28:45
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 15
Words: 38,753
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/898674
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sydneyknight/pseuds/sydneyknight
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>An AU during the summer of 2013, where Eren finds an unexpected friend.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I have no clue how long this will be. Sorry ;-;

I ran. I ran as fast as my legs could take me. I ran until I thought my lungs would burst. I ran until the muscles in my legs began to feel as if they were collapsing. I ran because my life depended on it. I ran because if I didn't, I would die.

 

Okay, not really. I was pretending to be chased by a crazy serial killer so that I could run farther. I was running along the sidewalk of my neighborhood and slowed to a jog. I looked around at the house numbers to see how far I had gone. My address was house 65, and I was on 141. Not bad, I thought to myself. 

I stopped and put my arms over my head. In through the nose, out through the mouth. In through the nose, out through the mouth.  
My breathing became less hitched and I looked around. "Huh, someones moving in to 145." I walked a little farther up the sidewalk so I could get a look at the house. No one had occupied that house for years, before I could even remember. A lot of rumors had circulated through the neighborhood that it was haunted by the old lady that had died in it, but my faintest memories of her told me she would not have been a soul to stay around very long.  
I took a couple deep breaths and began to jog again. I kept my eyes pinned on the ground so as to not get distracted when I suddenly heard another pair of footsteps behind me. 

I looked over my shoulder and saw a guy a little bit taller than me a couple of paces behind. I had never seen him before so I slowed to a walk to let him catch up with me. 

"Hey. Are you the one who just moved in to 145?" He looked at me and nodded. After a couple of minutes he was already out of breath. "Why did you run after me?" He was silent for a minute, trying to think of an answer. 

"I dunno. I saw you and thought 'hey, he probably lives here, so I should get to know him.' The names Jean." He stuck out his hand. It was large and very calloused. I wondered what kind of work he did to have his hands in such a state. I returned the handshake.

"Eren. My names Eren."

I hadn't seen Jean around for a couple of days. I ran by his house every day to see if he was out or if he wanted to come run with me, but he was never around, and only having met him once, I decided it would be weird if I went and knocked on his door. He was probably sleeping - I was the only person I knew that got up at 6 AM and went for a jog during the summer.

I checked my cellphone and noticed I had a text message from Mikasa. "I'm coming to get you and we're going to the store." I looked at the time and it was sent 20 minutes ago, which was when she got off of work. "Shit, she'll be here in a couple of minutes." I ran to my closet and put on a pair of gym shorts and a t-shirt, not too worried about my appearance. By the time I was done tying my shoes, my phone was ringing. I ran out the front door and locked it, hiding the key under the mat and jumping into the car. 

"What do we need to get at the store?"

"I'm having a friend over tonight and I told him I'd make dinner."

"Him? You're having a guy over?"

"Did I stutter? I'm fucking 17, Eren, I don't need you trying to act like I'm 12."

I was quiet for a little while. I hadn't realized how much she had grown up. I looked at her and noticed her sleek black hair had gone from her shoulders to the middle of her waist, and how much she ended up filling out her body. I always knew I would have to protect her from guys, but I never realized how big of a pain in the ass it was going to be.

"Fine. I'll go for a jog or something or go to Armin's house. Do what you want."

"Eren. You don't need to leave every time I have a guy over. It's not like I'll be having sex with him the minute he comes in the door. Plus...I think he's gay."

"Are you just saying that to make me feel better?"

"No, Eren, I seriously think he's gay." I didn't know how I felt about that. I wasn't completely sure of my sexuality yet. I was still a virgin...I mean, I had done things with girls, I had had girlfriends, but I was never as enthusiastic about it as my friends were. I wasn't sure whether I just had never found a girl I liked, or if I just didn't like girls...

"Eren."

"Hmmm?"

"We're here. C'mon, get out of the car." I stepped out of the car, still thinking about why I hadn't decided my sexuality, when all of a sudden, Jean popped into my head. "Why am I thinking about him now?" I wondered.

"Mikasa, I need to go get some more protein for my shakes in the morning."

"Fine. Meet me at checkout."

As I was deciding on what flavor of protein powder I wanted, I noticed someone walk past me. I turned to look (out of pure reaction) and I saw one of the most attractive men I'd ever seen. He was short, undoubtedly short, but with his assertive air, I didn't notice until I began to check him out. He was slim and well built. His arms were extremely well defined with incredible triceps. When he turned around I noticed his calves were chiseled almost like a Greek statue. His hair was jet black, parted perfectly down the middle, with a sharp featured face and cold, steel eyes. I noticed he was having trouble reaching something on the top shelf, so I walked over to him.

"Do you need me to grab that?"

Immediately those cold, steel eyes looked straight through my soul. They pierced me as if he were stabbing my gut and I regretted asking him as soon as the words came out of my mouth. After satisfied that his gaze had crushed my soul, he responded with a slow nod and pointed to a bottle of chardonnay. "Fuck, he's old enough to buy alcohol." I thought to myself. "Wait, why the fuck do I care? It's not like I'd ever date him. He's a guy." 

I grabbed the alcohol, gave it to him, and walked towards the checkout. I caught up with Mikasa at the checkout and got back in the car. On the way home, I couldn't stop thinking about those eyes.

"Eren, what's wrong? You were silent the whole way here and you're not saying a word now, either."

"Hmm? Oh. I don't know, nothings really wrong, I'm just not all here today, I guess."  
Mikasa didn't respond and turned on the radio. We pulled into the driveway and as soon as I was in the house I went to my bed. I turned off the lights and put on some music. I blocked out all of my thoughts, about my friends, about girls, about guys, about Jean, about that guy at the store-

"Eren. Dinner is almost ready and my friend is almost here. I want you to look nice and I want you to eat with us."

I sighed and turned off my music. I walked to my closet and put on a pair of fitted jeans and my favorite dark green shirt. I liked it because it wasn't quite a tee and it wasn't quite a polo - it was somewhere right in the middle.  
I walked out into the dining room and sat down. It smelled like steak.

"Damn Mikasa. This is a nice ass dinner. You sure you think this guys gay? Or are you trying to woo him out of it?" 

She glared at me so hard I could almost taste it. I got up and walked to the kitchen and got three plates, glasses, and sets of silverware and laid them all out. I was filling up my glass with some water when there was a knock on the door. 

"Mikasa, I think your bo-"

"I FUCKING KNOW EREN." She ran to the door and smoothed her hair down before opening it for her guest. I peeked my head around the corner and almost dropped my glass when I saw who it was. 

"Hi, Levi! Come on in!"


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Uhh I suck at these summary things but Mikasa goes to Armin's house and stuff

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, so I've decided to write this from each of the characters perspectives. Each chapter will be from a different point of view unless it messes up the work chronologically. If it does I'll tell you guys a chapter in advance. c;

I woke up in a cold sweat with a pounding headache. The nightmare I'd just woken up from really took a toll on me. As the objects in my room started to come into focus and my head stopped pounding, I could hear a faint screaming from the back of the house. 

It was Eren and Levi fighting again. Levi had been here for almost a month now, since I told him Eren and I's father was almost never home and also certainly wouldn't care. He had been kicked out of his mom's house for reasons unknown to me, but he unintentionally threw himself a pity party, so I let him stay here. I was really starting to regret it, though. I never imagined the two of them would be such fucks all the time. 

I picked out a pair of high waisted jean shorts and a blue t-shirt and some decent looking underwear and brought them into the bathroom with me. I already had a bra hanging on the back of the door, much to Eren's dismay, which I always ignored. I looked at myself in the mirror. My hair was a mess and I had huge black bags under my eyes. I sighed as I stepped into the shower and turned the water to cold. 

I always liked cold showers for some reason. Steam always bothered me and I hated the feeling of walking out of the shower barely being able to breathe because of how stuffy it was. Cold showers also forced me to stop thinking, because the only thing that ran through my mind was "holy shit I need to get out of here as fast as I can." 

I turned the shower off and turned on the bath water. I grabbed my razor and started shaving my legs, and before I knew it I had nicked the inside of my thigh. "God dammit." I muttered under my breath. I let it bleed and finished shaving. I wiped the blood off with a towel, shuffled some stuff around in a drawer to find a bandaid and put one on. I thoroughly dried off, put on my clothes, and wrapped my hair in the towel and walked back to my room.

"Uh...Mikasa..." I turned to look to see Eren standing there with a plate of pancakes and some orange juice. 

"Levi and I made you breakfast...there would've been more but we started fighting and burned the hashbrowns."

I rolled my eyes and grabbed the plate and the cup.

"You guys are really getting on my fucking nerves. Act like adults for once."

"Uh.."

"Oh, right. Thanks for breakfast."

I turned and opened the door to my room. Why was I so rude to him? It was always only Eren. Any time Eren and Levi fought, I always blamed Eren, regardless of whether it was his fault or not. Maybe it was because I was finally thinking of him as my brother and not some guy that took me in because my parents died. Maybe it was because I still felt like that was all it was. Maybe it was because I knew Levi would leave, and no matter how much I hated when they fought, I hated to see him go. I knew Levi was the type of person to leave as soon as he felt like it, and it was a wonder he hadn't left yet. 

I finished breakfast and walked into the kitchen. I rinsed my plate off and put the cup and the plate in the dishwasher. I walked into the living room and saw Eren and Levi sharing a couch, watching a movie. They weren't touching, but the fact that they were in such close proximity scared the shit out of me for some reason. 

"Uh...uh...I'm...I'm going out for a while." They turned around simultaneously and nodded. I shook my head and grabbed my keys and walked out the door. I jumped into my jeep and sped out of the driveway. 

The whole way there I was thinking about Eren and Levi. They looked so comfortable together. It was weird. The only times I had seen them together was when they were at each others throats. 

Before I knew it I was pulling into the driveway. I realized I hadn't taken my hair out of the towel so I let my hair down only to have it fall limp. Today was just not my day. 

I got out of the car and walked up to the door. I took a big breath and knocked. I waited a couple of minutes and checked my phone, and just before I was about to knock for the second time, a beautiful smile and big blue eyes surrounded by blonde hair greeted me.

After making me lunch, Armin and I curled up on the couch to watch a movie. He grabbed a blanket and threw it over us, wrapped his arms around me, and pulled me in really tight. I couldn't help but let out a sigh when I felt his arms around me. It felt like I was finally home.

"What? What's wrong?" 

I looked up and stared at his eyes. Every time I saw them I thought of the ocean. I loved how bright they were when he looked at me. 

"Mikasa."

"Hmm?"

"You're doing it again."

"What?"

"You're staring at me." I felt my face get hot and turned away, not wanting him to see how easily he made me blush.

"Oh, uh, sor-" Before I could finish my sentence he had grabbed my chin and turned my face towards his. The moment after that I felt his lips on mine, and the moment after that, I felt his tongue in my mouth. I was caught so off guard I had almost forgotten how to kiss. When I felt how warm his tongue was and how softly it was searching for mine, though, I remembered immediately. I returned his kiss with vigor, and when he pulled away I set my head on his chest. 

"Hey, Mikasa, when're we going to tell Eren?" As soon as those words left his mouth I could feel my heart crack. I was so scared to tell Eren. Armin was always Eren's friend, not mine, and I had always loved both of them. But when I turned 15 or so, I began to notice how well Armin was constructed, how soft his hair was, how deep his eyes were, and most of all, how good of a kisser he was. I really, truly loved Armin, but I was horrified of what Eren would do if he found out Armin and I had been sneaking around him for the past two years. 

"Armin, I'm...scared. What if..."

"What if he beats the shit out of me?" 

"No...I don't think he'd do that."

"What if he what, then?"

"What if he stops being your friend? What if he ends your friendship?"

Armin was an extremely bright kid, but by the look that slowly washed over his face I knew he had never thought about it. 

"I...I don't think he would do that. I know Eren. He told me, once, that the only reason he always got pissed at the guys you brought home was because you brought home shitty guys. He said he would be fine with whoever you liked, eventually, but if you could just bring home someone he knew was a good guy..."

"Did he really say that to you?"

"Along those lines, yeah." 

I punched him in the arm and smiled. 

"Y'know, we make two years next month." His voice sounded almost like a whisper. I couldn't believe it. I had spent two years sneaking behind my brothers back to be with his best friend and had fallen in love with him. It was almost dreamlike, in-between a nightmare and one of those dreams you never want to wake up from.

I sighed and looked up at him again. He had closed his eyes and his breathing was beginning to slow down. I knew he was falling asleep, but I wasn't tired, and if I couldn't sleep, neither could he. I squirmed in his arms to bring my face level to his. I stared at him for a couple of seconds before deciding to kiss him. As soon as I felt my lips collide with his I felt him jerk awake and open his eyes. 

"Mmm...Mikasa...I'm tired..." He managed to say in-between my aggressive kisses. 

"I know. I'm not." He sighed and let me kiss him. After he decided I had had my fun, he put his hands on my shoulders and pushed me onto my back. I could feel his lips drag across the skin on my neck and I shivered. He pulled some of my skin between his teeth and sucked on it, making sure a very visible red mark would be there by the time I got home. 

"Now, let me sleep." He wrapped his arms under my back and put his head on my shoulder. I could feel him breathing on my neck and knew he was doing it to punish me for waking him up. I couldn't do anything about it, seeing as he was laying on my arms, so I closed my eyes and eventually fell asleep.


	3. Chapter 3

It had been about a month since I had seen him. I had been running every day, but the amount I was running was biting in to my daily routine. I wanted so desperately to have the endurance to keep up with him, but I knew I wasn't a runner. The most running I had ever done was running to the vault.  


I laid in bed for a few more minutes before deciding to take a shower. It was 5:30 in the morning, but no one was home except me, so I didn't care how loud I was being. I walked into the bathroom without bothering to grab a towel (because really, who doesn't like walking around naked when no one is home?) I stripped down and started the water. I wanted to take a cold shower so I could wake up, but the warm water felt so relaxing I couldn't force myself to do it. 

After I was done washing, I turned the water off and walked to my room. I put on a pair of gym shorts and let my torso air dry. I walked to the living room, turned on the t.v, and prepared to fall back asleep.  
Just before I had really fallen asleep there was a knock on my door. I wasn't sure if I had heard correctly or if it was the beginning of a dream, so I sat on my couch and listened. I didn't hear anything again, but I decided to open the door anyway. When I did, I saw the back of a brunette walking away from me. And what a back it was.

"Eren?" He spun around immediately. I saw his face go red when he registered I wasn't wearing a shirt and he turned back around.

"Oh, uh, sorry, I didn't mean to wake you, I just hadn't seen you around in a whi-"

"Don't worry about it. I wasn't asleep."

"Oh, uh..."

"Do you want to come in?" I didn't really know why I was asking him that. I didn't even know why he was here to begin with.

"Uh...sure."

I held the door open for him and then sat down on the couch. I gestured for him to sit down as well.

"Sorry the house is so messy. We're still not quite settled."

"It's fine, my sister and I don't really keep our house very clean."

"Oh, you have a sister?"

"Mmm. Yeah. Her name is Mikasa."

He didn't really seem like he wanted to be here, and I didn't know whether I wanted him to be here either. I didn't know what to say, or what to ask, or what to do, so we just sat in silence for a couple of minutes.

"So, why did you come by?"

"Oh. Uh. I don't really know. I was on a jog and saw your parents cars weren't home so I thought I would see if you were home."

"Why did you care whether my parents were home or not?"

I saw him turn away from me and figured he was blushing again. This kid was definitely a weird one.

"Uh, I dunno. I thought if your parents opened the door and I was like 'hey, I met your son for like five minutes on a jog a month ago and I wanted to see what he was up to' they would think I was weird." 

"Yeah, when you say it like that, it does sound a little weird, haha."

It got really quiet again. I walked over to the kitchen and got another glass of water.

"Do you want anything to drink? We really only have water and juice but..."

"Water is fine, thanks." 

What the fuck was this kid doing here? Why did he come to my house if he wasn't going to talk? I was getting really tired of this bullshit. It was almost making me mad. 

"So...um...do you wanna come over to my house later for dinner?" 

I stopped in my tracks. I'd met this kid once, hadn't spoken to him since, and now he was asking me to dinner? What was he thinking?

"Yeah, sure. Dinner sounds nice."

What the fuck just came out of my mouth?

I showered (again) and walked to my room. I had no clue what to wear. I picked out some fitted jeans and a regular white shirt. I checked my phone for the time. It was 6:45. I had 15 minutes to walk to Eren's. 

It was then that it hit me. He never told me his address. He never told me his phone number, either, so I couldn't call and ask. I got on my laptop to try and find him on Facebook, I realized I didn't even know his last name. "Fuck."

I decided to just walk towards his house. I knew the general direction it was in, because that was the way he came from running every morning. Just as I stepped out the door I saw him and a girl slightly taller than him, but shorter than me, walking next to him. 

"Jean!" Eren called. He seemed a lot happier now than he did this morning.

"Hey, Eren." I waved and walked towards them. 

"You must be Mikasa?"

"Yep. That's me." She stuck out her hand and I shook it. It was really soft. I was almost embarrassed because I knew my hands were calloused and rough and they always felt like chalk. 

"Thanks for coming to get me. I had no clue where you lived or how to reach you."

"Not a problem. I realized I hadn't told you where I lived so I told Mikasa she needed to get her lazy ass off of the couch and walk with me." He smiled and grimaced as he suffered a punch in the arm. 

Eren and Mikasa turned and started to walk away. I followed them, but the sidewalk wasn't very large, and it could barely hold two people standing side by side. By default, I fell behind them, but neither of them were talking. We all just walked in silence for about ten minutes.  
When I came to their house I stopped in my tracks. It was huge. It was two stories, but it was raised with a very grand staircase. The two of them went under the stair case and into the carport. I followed them through a door and was met with a kitchen. I looked to the right and a dining room was there, and to the left there was a living room. I could see another staircase leading down to a basement and realized their house was really four stories. 

"Holy shit." 

"Yeah, like I said, Mikasa and I don't keep the house very clean. The only reason it's so nice right now is becau-"

"No. I mean, your house is fucking enormous."

"Oh, uh...yeah. Our dad is the head of some committee at the hospital and gets paid to travel to third world countries all the time so..."

"What does your mom do? Is she like, a lawyer or something?"

It got deathly quiet after I asked that. The wave of emotion that visibly hit Eren made me realize I shouldn't have asked that. As soon as the words left my mouth I regretted saying them.

"My mom is dead."

"Oh. I'm sorry."

"It's fine."

"How'd she die?"

What the fuck? There I went, asking questions that were too damn personal for my own good.

"They never determined the cause of the fire, but whatever happened, none of us were home, and she didn't make it out." 

"I'm really sorry." 

"It's fi-"

"Oi, brat. Who is this?" 

I turned around and saw an incredibly arrogant looking short man. He was incredibly clean shaven, if he even grew hair. He had a really well groomed undercut, and his black hair was parted straight down the middle. He was wearing a pair of tight black pants and a grey shirt that was just as tight. If it weren't for the intimidation factor, I probably would've stared at him a lot longer than deemed polite.

"Uh, Jean, this is Levi..." Eren muttered under his breath.

"This your older brother or something?" I stuck out my hand and Levi looked at it before scoffing and turning away. 

"Thank God no. He's just some dick that Mikasa let live here because he likes to throw himself pity parties."

Levi stopped in his tracks. I saw his hands clench in anger and he turned around. The scariest part of his expression was that he didn't have one. The only signs of his anger was the fact that he responded at all.

"You better watch your fucking mouth, kid. I know you don't want me to embarrass you in front of your boyfriend."

Levi looked me up and down slowly before smirking and walking away. 

"Sorry. He's nothing but a giant dick all the fucking time. I'm getting so tired of him."

"Why don't you make him leave?" 

"I can't. Mikasa's the one who invited him here, and she won't tell him to leave. They get along wonderfully. He and I, on the other hand, not so much."  
Eren looked down the hall to make sure Levi was out of earshot.  
"It's because I insinuated he was short."

"Really?"

"Mhm. I was at the store and I saw him and he couldn't reach something, so I asked if he wanted help. I swear his eyes are like daggers. I thought I was gonna' die." 

"That's actually kind of funny. Maybe next time he calls you my boyfriend, I'll call him short."

"Uh...if you want your ass beat, have fun with that. I'm going downstairs to play some xbox."

I guess that was his way of inviting me downstairs. I followed him and was greeted immediately with a huge room. It had a pool table in the middle, a dry bar, and a large couch and huge flatscreen with every type of gaming system you could imagine.

"Play a lot of video games?" 

"Yeah, I used to when I was younger. Once I started middle school and started running I kind of let them drop." I looked around and noticed a ton of track trophies on the wall. There were at least two for every category you could think of - cross country, pole vault, hurdles, 100 m, 200 m, 400 m, relays, long jump, discus, you name it. 

"Damn, you have a lot of trophies. How long have you been running for?"

It took him a minute to reply, concentrated on his game and killing the weird thing running around on the screen.

"Mmm...fifth grade, I think." 

"You think?"

"Yeah. It was sometime around there." 

I walked around the room and noticed a hallway that led to several other doors. "What's down here?"

"Uhhh, my room, a guest bathroom, and two guest bedrooms and a mini-kitchen."

"But doesn't upstairs have a kitchen?"

"Yeah. My room is technically upstairs next to Mikasa's, but I sleep down here. We used to rent this place out. All of it, I mean. Even the upstairs where Mikasa sleeps. This basement was kind of like the guest rooms for the guests of the guests, if that makes sense."

"Why'd you stop?"

He was quiet again, and not because he was playing his game, seeing as he had paused it. He turned around and looked at me for a little while, giving me a check-out that I assumed was sizing me up at the time. He let out a very audible sigh. 

"You don't have to tell me if it's something weird."

"It's pretty weird, but I'll tell you anyway, if you promise not to let on that you know about it."

"What do you mean?"

"Well, it's about Mikasa. She's not my real sister."

"Uh...I don't know if I like where this is going..."

"Fine, I'll tell you later." He walked over to the minibar and threw me a coke. 

"I don't really drink soda." I tossed it back at him and he tossed me a fizzy water.

"Here, princess." He had such a cocky smile.

"I'm surprised you drink soft drinks, considering how much you run." 

"I run it off, that's why I can. You look pretty fit, so why don't you?"

"My trainer would kill me if he found out I drank anything with sugar."

"Your trainer?"

"Mmm. I'm a gymnast." I saw his eyes travel up and down my body again, trying to justify what I had said, I guess.

"Explains why you have such rough hands." 

"So you noticed?" I subconsciously shoved my hands into my back pockets. My hands were huge and I was always really self conscious about them. 

"Haha, yeah. I wondered if you were like a construction worker or something. But it makes sense now, since you chalk your hands up all the time. If you think you're self conscious about your hands, don't worry. I wish I didn't have such feminine hands."

"There's nothing wrong with having girl hands." I smirked and walked over to the couch. He handed me a controller, or, really, threw one at me for the sarcastic remark I had said. I sat down next to him and concentrated as hard as I could on killing the alien running across my screen. I was really shit at video games.

"Hey, fags, dinners ready." We both turned around to see a tiny ass in tight black pants walking up the stairs.

"I fucking hate him." 

I laughed. 

"Yeah, he's a pretty big dick."

Eren and I walked up the stairs and into the dining room to find smoked salmon and fettuccine alfredo on the table. 

"Oh shit." I turned and looked at Eren and gave him a questioning glance. 

"Mikasa always cooks good food when she's pissed off or wants to impress someone. So she either hates you, or thinks you're really hot." I didn't know how that made me feel. Mikasa was definitely nothing short of beautiful. She was also nothing short of "Holy shit, please don't murder me." Hopefully, she just wanted to impress me.

I waited until Eren sat down and took the seat across from him. I saw Mikasa come out of her room scowling and was immediately afraid.

"Thanks for dinner, Mikasa!" I tried to make it sound as cheerful as possible, but I think it just upset her more.

"Yeah."

Levi came and sat down next to me, seeing as Mikasa had chosen the seat next to Eren.

"Mikasa, you really need to clean the kitchen as you cook." 

"Levi, not now. Seriously."

"Whatever."

It seemed everyone in this house hated each other. I was so confused. My parents were rarely ever home but when they were I valued it. Being an only child sucked, but I guess if you had to deal with someone for almost all of your life and not even be really related to them...

"So, Eren, you and Jean do it yet?"

What? What the fuck did I just hear?

"Yeah, Levi, we did. Leave me the fuck alone."

WHAT?

"Uh, haha, Eren, what're you talking about..."

"It seems your boyfriend disagrees, Eren."

"Levi, what the fuck is your problem? You fucking jealous or something?"

"No, Eren, I'm just trying to get you to come out of the fucking closet.

"What the fuck are you talking about Levi? I'm not gay!"

"That's not what you said earlier when Mikasa left the house to go fuck your best friend!"

Everything got really quiet really fast. I could see the anger sweep over Mikasa's face and Eren's. Eren looked first at Levi, and then slowly, as if not wanting to believe it, looked at Mikasa. When Mikasa averted her eyes, his face went from furious to despondent in less than a second. He picked up his plate and his glass, brought them into the kitchen, and turned and faced me.

"Jean, I don't mean to be a dick, but I think you should probably leave." 

I understood completely. I didn't want to invade on their personal lives, especially considering I barely even knew Eren. I nodded and put my plate and my glass next to Eren's and walked to the front door.

"Dinner was delicious, Mikasa. Thanks."

I walked out and headed towards my house. That was fucking intense. I felt bad about hearing all of that, but one part of it really, truly delighted me. Did Eren really confess he was gay? I had known I was gay for a while, since about 13, and I luckily had parents that supported me. Ever since I saw Eren he had never been out of my mind since. I never really thought about him sexually, (yet) but no matter how hard I tried not to think about him he was always in the back of my mind. There was just something about his face that had burned itself into my brain. Even if I couldn't picture him clearly, I could still grasp the outlines of his face, like trying to recall a dream you had just woken up from. 

Before I knew it I was at my door. I unlocked it and went straight to my room. I laid in my bed, barely even bothering to take my shoes off. I didn't even notice my parents had come back. 

"Jean, where've you been? We've been worried sick about you!" I looked over at my door and saw it cracked with my moms worried face poking through. 

"Sorry, ma, my phone was on si-" Fuck. I had left my phone on the couch at Eren's. 

"It's okay. Where were you, though?" 

"I was at this kid Eren's house. He lives down the street. I met him a couple of weeks ago and he invited me to dinner today." 

"Well that was nice of him! Is he a friend?" 

She put way too much emphasis on the word friend for it to really mean friend. I knew what she was hinting at and picked the shoe up off the floor and tossed it towards the wall. 

"Get outta' here, ma!" 

She laughed and shut my door. I heard her yell to my dad "JEAN'S GOT A FRIIIIEEEEEND, JEAN'S GOT A FRIIIIEEEEND" 

God damnit.


	4. Chapter 4

Eren shut the door after Jean left and turned around to face Mikasa and I. He finally had a look of true rage in his eyes and it got me damn well excited. 

I opened my mouth to speak but Eren shot me a look that shut even me up. I knew it was out of place and wrong for me to say all of that shit I said, especially with Jean here, but the way Eren acted like being gay was a bad thing really pissed me off. It had come out of his mouth earlier that day, but as soon as Jean stepped into the house he acted as if he wouldn't even dream of such a thing. 

Wait.

Did Eren actually like Jean?

I hoped not. I guess I was really bad at showing it, but I wanted Eren to be mine. I liked how he never let me tell him what to do, even though it was really fucking annoying. It showed me he was an individual, and not someone who just did what I told them to do because they were intimidated by me. It pissed me off to no end, but when Eren talked back to me, it made me respect him a little bit more each time. 

"Mikasa..." She looked at me with literally no emotion. Her face was completely blank, almost as if she couldn't comprehend what just happened. I didn't think it was that big of a deal, but I guess she wanted to tell Eren, and not have me shout it at him to make him angry. I always had a problem with that. If someone pissed me off, I would do whatever I had to to make them feel worse than I did, no matter who it hurt, or how badly. I really needed to stop doing that. 

"Levi, you should probably go downstairs for a little while." I nodded and knew she wanted to talk to Eren about it by herself. I went downstairs and turned on the tv but didn't pay any attention to it. 

I was so damn tired of those two keeping secrets from each other. Before my mom kicked me out I told her everything. I guess most people didn't see me as a mama's boy but my mom taught me to be fucking proud of myself and who I was and the decisions I made, whether they were bad or good, because both of those helped me to make who I was. Mikasa had been sneaking behind Eren's back with his best fucking friend for almost two years now, and she expects shit to go over smoothly? I definitely should've kept my mouth shut, but holy shit, Mikasa, you should've fucking told him sooner. 

I didn't hear any screaming and looked at the clock. It was almost 10:15 now. I decided to try and creep up the stairs and see if they were done talking, seeing as neither of them probably wanted to talk to me right now. 

Should I say sorry? I couldn't help feeling like I had done wrong. I was never a person to hold my tongue, and whatever came to my mind, I said it. If something pissed me off, I was going to let them know, and they both knew that. But still...

God damnit. I almost never doubted myself as much as I did right now. I guess I really cared about the two of them. Fuck. 

I went up the stairs when I didn't hear either of them saying anything and found neither of them in the kitchen. I listened to see if they were in one of the rooms but I didn't hear anything either. I looked out the window into the driveway and saw Mikasa's car gone. They probably went for a drive to talk about it or went to Armin's house. 

I decided if they seemed really pissed about it I would apologize, and if not, I would just let it be. I definitely wanted to have a talk with Eren later, though, regardless of how mad he was. 

I decided a nice, hot shower would take my mind off of things and I decided to take one downstairs. Eren's bathroom had a jacuzzi and I really wanted to relax. I ran the bath water and stripped down, and put my back to one of the jets. It was like a nice, personalized massage. 

I started to think about Eren and Jean. I could tell Jean was gay and I knew he liked Eren, or at least, was beginning to. Jean had the kind of confidence to blend in to society but not lose himself or his faith in who he was. He knew he was gay, he accepted it, and he let it be. I had a feeling he would help Eren find himself. 

I let out an elongated sigh and moved my back closer to the jet. I couldn't help feeling a little jealous, if not let down. I knew Jean was a better fit for Eren, I knew Jean would help him become a better person, and most of all, I knew Eren would fall for Jean. I always had a problem with putting up too much of a front to people I liked and driving them away. Regardless, I was still a horrible match for Eren, and elected to stay away from him as much as possible. (After I had that talk, at least.) 

I heard the front door shut and looked at the clock. They had been gone for almost two hours. I looked down at my hands and realized they were wrinkly. I guess I had been in here for a long time, too. I got out and wrapped a towel around my waist and headed upstairs. 

I wasn't met with an angry glare or yelling or tears or anything at all, because I wasn't met with Eren or Mikasa or Armin. I almost jumped out of my skin when I saw Jean standing in front of me.

"Uhh..." I saw him blush and look away. "I just...forgot my phone downstairs and no one was answering so I just came in..." 

I just shook my head and went to my room. I got dressed and waited for Jean in the living room. I wanted to talk to him. 

When I saw him coming up the stairs I whistled to get his attention and pointed to the sofa adjacent to mine. He gave me an odd look but decided not to question me and sat down.

"You're gay, aren't you?" I looked at him and tried to make sure that my face was void of all emotion. 

"Sure am. You are too." 

I was kind of taken aback by how confidently he said that. I tried not to show it, but the look on his face told me that, even if for a split second, my face had failed me. 

"You like Eren, don't you?" He didn't even have to think about it.

"Yup. You do too." 

This time I didn't even care about what expression was on my face. I was completely off guard when he answered so quickly, but his accusation (albeit, correct) knocked me flat on my ass. 

"You wouldn't be asking me this if you didn't. You obviously already knew I was gay, and you obviously knew I like Eren, and I have a feeling that you were going to tell me that he's not comfortable with himself and that I should help him along because you're too closed off as a person and not to hurt him. Blah blah blah. I already knew all of that." 

What. The. Fuck. 

"Good. I'm glad you already knew all of that. If you hadn't, I would've been wrong about you." 

What. The. Fuck.

"Cool. I'm gonna go then. And give this to Eren, please." He handed me a sticky note that was folded and turned to leave.

"Hey, Jean."

"What?"

"Just remember, if you leave Eren vulnerable at all, even for a split second, I will come in and take him away from you before you could even blink." 

He turned and walked out of the door.


	5. Chapter 5

I looked out of the car window. I didn't really know how I felt at the moment - I wasn't angry, I wasn't sad, I wasn't even really disappointed. I was just kind of...numb. 

Even though I was watching houses from Armin's neighborhood go by, I didn't realize I was at his house until I heard Mikasa's door slam and watched her walk to his front door. I let out a sigh and walked to the door myself. 

Armin opened the door and let us in. He sat down on the couch and gave us both a big smile. He had no clue what was going on.

"Hey, Armin." I didn't mean to let on that I knew, but I could tell he knew something was up.

"Hey, guys, what's going on? What's wrong?" His face was growing more and more concerned every second. Mikasa finally gave him a glance and then nodded sideways at me and then looked away from him. 

"He...he knows? I thought...we were going to tell him together next week?" 

"Yeah, well, Levi decided to open his big ass mouth and tell him before we had the chance to." 

"Why the fuck did Levi know?"

"He saw your little contribution to my skin."

Armin was silent for a while and looked at me. I wasn't even really listening. Really, I was questioning myself on how I didn't figure it out. Armin and Mikasa never said they were hanging out together alone, but when I thought about it, every time Mikasa was out of the house, Armin was "working with his grandpa" or something. Every time Armin came over, Mikasa prepared an extravagant dinner. Every time she and I went to his house, she always sat in the middle of us, always jumped at any opportunity to hang out with him, with or without me, I guess. 

I think I was mostly disappointed in myself for not knowing, but also for making them think they couldn't trust me enough to tell me. I felt like they thought I was some sort of monster consumed with rage, but I would never do anything to hurt either of them. They were both my world, my lifeline. Without them, I wouldn't be where I was. When Mikasa's parents started renting the house out and she and I became friends I was so happy. That was before my dad started leaving a lot and when my mom was alive, so I still had a family, but with Mikasa around I had more than that. I had someone to protect. 

I had Armin to protect, too. He was grown now, and could take care of himself, but when he was a child, he was the nerdy kid, the one everyone picked on, the one they all took their anger out on. But when they took their anger out on Armin, I took my anger out on them.

Maybe that's what they were afraid of? That'd I'd be so angry I'd lose control? I had never done anything to hurt either of them. I always tried my hardest to protect them. 

"Why didn't you tell me?"

They both turned their heads towards me at an alarming rate. I saw them look at each other and could tell they had the same answer, so I turned my head towards Mikasa.

"I dunno, Eren. You were always so mad when I brought guys home, I just thought...that if you found out Armin and I were together, you'd never trust him around me, you'd never let him out of your sight, or that you'd be angry. I was afraid that you'd be so angry that you would destroy your friendship with Armin. Armin was in your life first, not me, and if something happened to your friendship, I would've felt like it was my fault, like I was the one who took away your best friend, and I didn't want that on my shoulders. Armin was so happy when we started dating, he wanted to tell you right away, so please don't blame him. It was my fault, I made him keep his mouth shut, I told him not to te-"

"Do you not trust me?"

She shut up immediately. The look on her face was something of pure confusion, so I asked again.

"Do you not fucking trust me?" 

"Eren, I don't really know what you-"

"You would've told me if you had trusted me. I thought you two knew that you were the only people I had left. I thought you two knew that you were the only ones I could rely on, that you were my lifeline, that I did everything I could to protect you, that I would do anything to protect you, and you never trusted me once. Now that I look back on it, Mikasa, you never let me make my own fucking decisions. What is it? Do you think you owe me? You don't fucking owe me anything. You don't have to take care of me. I can make my own decisions and I can feel what I want and you can't stop me. If you had trusted me enough to know that I wouldn't have cared, that I would've been happy for you, that I would've been happy you finally found someone to treat you right, if you had just fucking trusted me..."

They both looked away at the same time. 

"Of course I trust you, Eren..." 

"Then fucking look at me and say it!" 

"Eren, why do I have to prove to you that I trust you?" 

"Because if you don't want to prove it, then you don't!" 

I knew it. I fucking knew it. By this time I was filled with nothing but distrust and disappointment and...emptiness. My best friends, my sister, two people I had known since my childhood, thought I was a monster. 

"Eren, I trust you. I was just scared. I didn't want you to hate me. I didn't want you to think I was trying to take away your best friend. I'm sorry."

Her voice was cracking towards the end of that sentence, and so was my heart. Mikasa was so strong. I hated to hear her cry. I had only heard it once or twice before, and each time it broke me into pieces, but it was never my fault. 

I felt something warm running down my cheek. I touched my hand to my face and realized I was crying. It wasn't a gross sobbing, I wasn't even making a hiccup. I was just...crying.

I wiped the tears off of my face and turned around to see Mikasa standing in the middle of the room with tears streaming down her face. I could tell she was holding in the noises, but as hard as she tried, she couldn't hold in the tears. Just like me.

I walked to her and wrapped my arms around her as tightly as I could. I didn't care. No matter how mad she made me, I could never leave her to cry alone. Never. 

"I'm sorry." I felt her tears running down her face and dripping onto my shirt. I couldn't decide if her words or her tears stung more. 

Armin was standing off to the side watching the whole thing unfold. I hadn't asked him to say a word. I wasn't really mad at either of them, but I was kind of pissed that he didn't try and stick up for Mikasa. She had pinned it all on herself, taking the blame entirely off of him, and he just stood there. I'd deal with it later. 

I never found out how long it had been going on, and I never wanted to know.

I walked into the house and plopped down on the couch. Mikasa ended up staying over at Armin's house for the night so they could talk about it alone. I didn't really care. I was just happy that was over with. 

It was so exhausting, dealing with them. I know I was a big pain in the ass, but c'mon. 

I walked over to the fridge and grabbed a coke. When I shut the door, I noticed two new sticky notes. Levi had this stupid thing where instead of telling us what he wanted us to do, he would just write a note on the fridge. 

One of them was a number with no name on it, and the other had a note written in perfect penmanship. "Come in my room when you get home - I want to talk."

Fuck. I really didn't want to go through another confrontation. I knew if Levi and I got in a fight tonight, he would definitely win. I was so emotionally depleted I would probably just break down in front of him.

I decided against my better judgement and went into his room anyway. He had chosen the guest room with stark white walls and had very simplistic furniture. He had his mattress on the ground, but his sheets didn't have even one wrinkle in them. He had a couple of band posters hanging around the wall, and his closet was color coded, from greys to navy blue to black blue to black. He didn't own one white shirt.

He didn't have a dresser and none of us felt like moving one down from the main house, so we just installed a shelf for him to hang his things on. He had all of his jeans folded meticulously, and had gone out and bought some wicker baskets to put his underwear and socks in. Of course, his underwear were folded perfectly and also organized in color, along with his socks, which were tucked into each other. 

I looked around for Levi but I didn't see him. I went out into the hall and checked to see if the bathroom light was on, but it wasn't. I shrugged and decided to go downstairs to take a bath. 

I walked into my room to find all of my shit reorganized and my tile floor being scrubbed by a shirtless Levi. 

"Uh. What the fuck."

Levi looked up at me and and stood up. He took one of his yellow mom gloves off and put his hand on his hip. My whole room smelled faintly of bleach and laundry detergent. 

"I took a bath in your bathroom and realized you've let the entire downstairs go. It's almost like you broke up with it and it decided to go eat McDonald's every god damn day for a year. What the fuck yourself, Eren."

"You...cleaned...the entire downstairs...in-" I looked at the clock. Holy shit. It was almost 3 in the morning. "6 hours?"

"Yeah."

The next thing I knew I was practically falling onto him. For some reason, coming home to a completely clean living area was such a relief. 

He caught me and gave me a really odd look. 

"Thank you. I was beginning to get really pissed off at all of the shit on my floor."

"Yeah, well, at least you're not like Mikasa who leaves bowls and cups on her bed and lets them sit there for weeks."

I couldn't help but laugh. It was true. Mikasa would leave bowls of food and drink in her room and let them sit there until mold started growing in them. It made dishes a real fucking pain when she let things like pasta dry out and stick to the plates. 

I walked over to the couch and turned on the TV. Levi walked over and sat on the couch with me, but turned the TV off. He had a really odd look in his eyes. 

"You wanted to talk?" 

He let out an elongated sigh and looked down at his hands. He was quiet for a while and I could tell he was fumbling for words.

"Eren..."

I didn't respond.

"I'm sorry, for earlier." 

"It's okay, Levi. I know you didn't really mean for that to come out."

"You do?" 

"Yeah, we're kind of alike."

Uhhh what? What did I just say? Did I just say Levi and I were alike?

"You and I don't really have a filter when we're angry, all we want to do is hurt the person that hurt us...or hurt the person that hurt someone we love. We say anything to get back at someone without thinking of the cost."

He kept looking down at his hands and I noticed he was wearing a ring on his index finger. It was stainless steel on the outside, but the center was black and spun when he ran his thumb across it. I had never seen a ring like that before and watched him for a couple of minutes. 

"Eren."

"Hmm?"

"I said thank you about five minutes ago and you haven't said a word."

"Oh. Uh. I'm sorry. I was looking at your ring..."

"Oh, yeah. My mom got it for me to spin when I needed to concentrate or something was making me angry or I was feeling anxious." 

"Hey, Levi...Why did your mom kick you out?" 

He shot me a look I had never seen before. It was incredibly conflicted.

"If you don't want to tell me, it's fine. Mikasa never told me because she said you didn't tell her the full story, so if you don't want to tell me either, it's cool."

He stopped spinning his ring. He looked up at the ceiling and closed his eyes. 

"My dad was never in my life, really. He was a drunkard and abusive. Never paid child support, never called on my birthday or Christmas, y'know. Typical asshole dad stuff. Every once in a while, when I was younger, he would come around and take me to the zoo or something. I thought he was just coming to see me, but really he was begging my mom for money. I was a bargaining chip. My mom knew I loved my dad, so the only way she would give him money is if he would do things with me. I slowly started figuring it out the older I got. Eventually, when he knew I knew, he just stopped coming around. When that happened, my mom started seeing other guys. I was happy for her, but they were all just like him...drunks, abusers, con men, just, y'know, the sleezy type of guys you would find at a run down bar. All of them liked me, though, because I wasn't a douchebag kid that tried to keep them away from my mom. I was too busy trying to find a girl I liked, but I never found her. When I gave up with that and realized I was gay, I started spending more and more time with my mom. The more time I spent with her, the more I noticed what kind of dicks she was seeing. I noticed when she put on makeup a little more heavily than usual, or when she wore long sleeves in the middle of summer. I noticed all of the empty beer bottles and vodka bottles all over the house, and I noticed when the guy she was seeing, Erwin, came home, she would lock herself in her room. I saw all of the pieces of the puzzle, but I never really put them together. I just thought she was being weird or something. I dunno. I was like, 15, at the time."

He was quiet again for a little while. I decided it would be better to just not ask him to continue, and if that's where he wanted to stop, then that's where I'd let it end. I could tell this was bringing up some emotions he had tried hard to suppress. For some reason, I really, really wanted Levi to trust me. 

I didn't ask him to, but he let a sigh and started talking again.

"Anyway, this went on for about..3 or 4 years. It started to become more and more frequent, and our money kept disappearing, and our landlord kept yelling at us, and random numbers started calling my phone. Our electricity kept going off, and so did our internet, and our TV. Their fights were getting worse. I was graduating high school, so I was out at my friends a lot, and a lot of times I wasn't home. And that's when it happened. He would always hit her when I wasn't home. I told one of my friends, and he told his parents, and his parents told the police. My mom refused to press charges against him, so instead, she made him go to a rehab facility. He was gone for about 6 months, and when he came back, he seemed so much better. It seemed like it had really worked for him. He was so happy to see my mom, and my mom was so happy to have him back in her life. She never flinched when he approached her, he had stopped drinking. As soon as he came home he went out and found a job, and it seemed like we were a regular family. I had applied to a college and had gotten accepted. It really seemed like stuff was finally going right.

The ideal family lasted for about two years. I was about 20 by this time, college was kicking my ass but I was getting through it. I was majoring in psychology, I had a couple of really good friends, I had found myself a boyfriend. I still hadn't told my mom that I was gay, though. I knew she wouldn't care, I just hadn't found a good time to tell her. When my boyfriend told me he loved me, that was when I decided I would come out. I told her, and she was totally fine with it. She encouraged me to be who I wanted to, just like she always had. She was genuinely happy that I had found someone I loved. Like I said, it all seemed to be going really, really well."

I could tell the really hard part was coming. I looked at him and could tell he was struggling for the courage to speak. I didn't know if I should reach out to him or if it would scare him away, so I kept my hands to myself and let him figure it out. 

"It wasn't going well at all. The entire time I was off at college, he was doing the same thing. He was beating my mom, he was stealing her money, he had lost his job, he was drinking, he was the exact same person. He never changed.

One night, I decided to stop by with dinner as a surprise for the both of them. I had no clue what was going on at the time, because my mom never told me, never let on. I guess after like 6 years of being beaten she had figured out how to hide the bruises pretty well. 

Anyway, I knocked, but no one answered. I decided to let myself in. I was being really, really quiet in case they were asleep or something. I decided I would just leave the chicken on the counter if I didn't hear them and leave. 

Well, I did hear them. Kind of. I heard something, and it sounded like something really hard had hit the floor. As soon as I stepped into the apartment I could tell something was off. I didn't know what, but after that thud, I knew exactly what was happening. I ran into their bedroom and found him standing over my mom, kicking her while she laid on the ground. I saw a puddle of blood by her mouth and saw her cough some more up every time he kicked her. Her face was almost completely black on one side, and she had a really large cut running down the side of her arm.

I just fucking lost it. I grabbed the closest thing next to me, which happened to be a very large, iron candle holder, and just smashed the back of his head in. When he hit the ground I just kept beating the shit out of him. I pummeled his face in with my fists, I kicked him in both of his sides until I was sure he would never breathe properly again. I stomped on his back hoping I would break his spine. I had absolutely no control over what I was doing. I just wanted to protect my mom.

I stopped, finally, and helped my mom up. He was bleeding pretty bad from me hitting him with the candle stick and I knew I was in deep shit. We were going to have to bring him to the hospital. We did, and the police came. We told them he had attacked my mom and she had hit him with the candlestick in self defense. We told them I had done the rest, the beating with my fists, when I saw him attacking her. They bought it. He was unconscious, so he couldn't attest to anything. 

My mom was by his bedside when he woke up. She told him she had videos of him stealing money from her. She had also called the rehab facility and was told that he had checked himself out two months early. She said if he told the police what really had happened, she would get there first, and tell them that he was a thief and hadn't followed court orders." 

He looked straight at me for the first time. I felt like he was seeing straight through me. 

"Erwin said the only way for him to not tell the police was if she kicked me out. So to keep me from going to jail for attempted murder, she did what he told her to do.

So yeah. My mom kicked me out of the house so I wouldn't go to jail, I had to break up with my boyfriend because he started to become scared of me when I told him what had happened, and I was living on the street for almost a year. Those friends I had in college were done with me when they found out I was homeless. 

Then one day, your sister decided to buy me dinner. She asked why I was homeless, and I told her that I had almost killed someone protecting my mom. She didn't understand, so I told her my mom had kicked me out to keep me from going to jail. 

Mikasa came back every day and bought me dinner or brought me something to eat. She never physically gave me money, but she always gave me whatever I wanted in terms of food. 

Finally, she told me I could come live here. She brought me over while you were out with Armin or on a jog or something. She told me to shower and then gave me some clothes she had bought. She made me go get a job, which I did. I lived in a hotel room for about a week, and then finally, when she thought it was right, she told me to gather all of my shit and come over. I decided to stop at the store to buy her some wine, and that's where I met you. 

So, that's my story all the way up to here. Now I'm sitting here, telling some brat my life story. It's crazy how shit ends up, isn't it?"

I didn't know how to respond. I couldn't find words. I knew "I'm sorry." wasn't going to fucking cut it. I couldn't think of anything to do or to say.

"Levi..."

"What? Cat got your tongue?"

"Why...why did you tell me all of that?"

I could tell my question had caught him off guard. 

"Well, uh, because you asked, I guess."

"Mikasa asked."

He was quiet again.

"Like I said, Eren. Because you asked."

"I'm not sure I understand."

Levi looked at me in a way I had never seen before. It was almost...endearing? 

"Eren, I know I have a really shitty way of showing it, but I actually really like you, kid."

Yet again, I had no clue what to say. I had never thought of Levi romantically, but the minute those words left his mouth, my heart began to race. Of course I had thought about him sexually, how could I not? He loved to walk around the house in nothing but his tight ass briefs, and I was pretty sure he did it to tease me. Now I was positive. 

"It's okay, Eren. I know you don't think of me like that. I just thought I should tell you." 

"Levi..."

"What?"

"You shouldn't just assume things. Now that I know you're actually a person, and not a robot programmed to dick setting..." I gave him a half smile and he returned it. 

"Thanks for listening, kid.

Oh, and that brat Jean left you his number. I put it on the fridge. Turns out I've got some competition."


	6. Chapter 6

I felt my face buzzing me out of my dream. I sat up and looked around and waited for my room to come into focus. I looked at the alarm clock, and groaned when it said 5:34. 

"Who the fuck is texting me right now..." I picked up my phone and saw a number I didn't recognize. 

"Sorry you had to listen to all of that. If you're awake, I'll be on my morning jog if you wanna join." I realized immediately that the text was from Eren. I saved his number and looked at the time stamp. He had sent that almost ten minutes ago. I hurriedly threw on some pants and a shirt, brushed my teeth, and dampened my hair to make it lay straight. I slept in really weird positions, so I always had pretty bad bedhead. 

Just as I was walking out of my bathroom I heard a knock on the door. I opened it and found Eren without a shirt on in front of my door. I shook my head and turned around, telling him to close the door on his way in.

"Why're you shaking your head?"

"Because it's barely even 80 degrees out and you're running without a shirt on."

"80 is hot. It's normally closer to 70 in the mornings."

"You're just showing off."

"To you? Don't flatter yourself, Jean." He flashed me a cocky smile that told me I had found out his true intentions.

"Did you eat yet? I can cook some breakfast."

"No, I haven't. I normally have a smoothie before I run and eat breakfast afterwards."

"So...yes or no to breakfast?"

"Hmm...how about you run with me, and then we'll eat breakfast at my house?"

I didn't know how I felt about going over to his house again, especially a day after witnessing a giant fight within the first two hours of me being there.

"Uh..."

"Fine. Breakfast here."

I was relieved he understood and turned to walk into the kitchen.

"What do you want?"

"Mmm...what do you have?"

He followed me into the kitchen and opened the fridge like he owned the place. 

"Boy, there's not much in here."

"There's plenty in there, Eren, just nothing you want to eat."

I was always embarrassed to have people go through my pantry - my parents were health nuts, and so was I, to be honest. I didn't mind my lifestyle, but when most of my friends ate the shit they did, my house was always chosen last for dinner. Oh well.

We decided on eggs and toast for breakfast, and Eren made a side of baked apples with cinnamon. I poured us some orange juice and we sat down to eat. 

We didn't say a word through breakfast. It appeared that Eren was really hungry, but I kept my mouth shut for a different reason. 

I had never expected him to be so built. He wasn't as slim as I would've thought. I always had a preconceived idea that runners were supposed to be tall and slim, but Eren was almost built...outwards. I never noticed it with his shirt on, but he had really broad shoulders, and his waist didn't really taper in very much. 

"Hey, Eren, do your nipples ever bleed when you run? I heard that was a thing."

He looked up at me and shook his head, not as an answer, but to show me how stupid that question was.

"Wow, Jean, you haven't even introduced him to your own mother and you're asking him about nipples." I saw an evil grin spread across my mom's face as she looked from me to him quickly. 

She looked Eren right in the eyes.

"Is this that cute boy you've been telling us about? Is this the reason why you've been getting up in the mornings and running? I can see why...I don't think you'd be able to keep up with him if you ran every day for the rest of your life!" She laughed, not once taking her eyes off of Eren. I just stared down at my plate and felt my face getting hotter and hotter by the second.

"Uh...Eren...this is my mom...mom...this is Eren..." I was absolutely mortified. 

"Hello, Eren! You can call me Mrs. Kirschtein." 

"Good morning. Sorry for dropping by so unexpectedly." 

"Don't worry about it! I've been wanting to meet you ever since Jean said he liked you."

"MA! I NEVER FLIPPIN' SAID THAT!" I stood up quickly and banged my fists on the table. God dammit. This was so embarrassing.

She laughed and walked out of the room. I picked up my plate and brought it to the kitchen and left it on the counter. 

"You done?"

"Mhm. It was delicious, thanks." He was acting as if that hadn't phased him at all. It probably hadn't. He probably thought my mom was joking. 

I picked up his plate and put it on top of mine. I rinsed both of them off and heard the fridge door open next to me.

"Have you really been running every morning?"

God dammit. 

"...yeah." 

He was silent for a moment, but I knew what was coming. He was going to ask me why, and I wasn't going to have a response. I couldn't make myself look like any less of a fool than I already did, so I just braced myself for his next question.

"Cool."

I looked at his face and nothing but sheer amusement was spread across it. It was then that I realized he already knew why, but he was nice enough not to make me say it, considering my mom had just blurted it out in front of him. The smirk on his face drove me mad. I wanted to punch him and kiss him at the same time. He was toying with me. 

He shut the fridge door and walked to the living room. He lifted his arms above his head in a lazy stretch and let out a big yawn. I couldn't tell if he was doing it on purpose or if he was actually tired, but regardless, it made me want to tackle him. The muscles in his back drove me insane. 

"Go put a shirt on."

"Why?"

"It's weirding me out that you feel so comfortable in my house without a shirt on."

"Stop being such a baby." 

He jumped over the back of the couch and sprawled out on it. He gave me another one of his smirks and I knew he was just showing off. Dick.

"Well, now that I know you've been running...let's go."

"Huh?"

"We don't have to go far. We can just run back to my house, and if you still have stamina left we can run back here. Or if you're too mortified to ever step foot in my house again, we can run back here."

I looked at him with absolute bewilderment. This kid really, really liked to run.

"Why'd you start running?"

He put his hands behind his head and looked up at the ceiling. I could tell he was thinking, but about what, I didn't know.

"I'm not really sure why, but I remember it really helped when I was angry. You've never met him, but my friend Armin used to get beat up all the time. He was a really small, timid, nerdy kid, so he was the blunt of everyone's jokes...and fists. I was his only friend, really. Sooner or later, after how many fights I got in protecting him, he was my only friend, too. 

I would get in trouble at school a lot for fighting, I never got expelled or suspended, because it was always chasing off bullies, but I would still get in trouble. It would stress my mom out a lot. I always fought with her, but I loved my mom more than anything. When we grew up, Armin got beat up less, but still got made fun of a lot. He and my mom both told me they would rather let it happen than me get in trouble for Armin, so instead of beating the shit out of people, I started running. Ever since then, I can't stop. It helps me think, and it's also just...calming. I dunno. It's kind of hard to explain." 

"I'll run with you if you put a shirt on."

"God dammit. Fine. Do you have anything that's not cotton?"

I walked to my room and gave him a shirt and put on some tennis shoes. I walked out of the door and saw him starting to jog. I could tell he was keeping the pace low so that I could keep up. 

We reached his house, and to be honest, I didn't feel too bad. I didn't know about going back to my house though, not with my parents there...

"What do you wanna do, Jean?" 

That was the first time I had ever heard Eren say my name. It sounded so smooth coming out of his mouth, like I had heard it so many times before, even though I knew I hadn't.

"Uh, we can stay here, I guess. I don't really feel like going back to my house." 

"Fine by me." I followed him under the carport again and downstairs to his room. He had his mattress on the floor, and his sheets barely had one wrinkle. All of his clothes were folded perfectly, except for his shirts, which were hanging in his closet according to color. All of the things on his shelves were perfectly symmetrical, and even though he had a desktop and a sound system, I couldn't see one cord hanging around anywhere.

"Jesus, Eren, I didn't know you were such a clean freak."

"I'm not. When I got back from Armin's last night, I found Levi had cleaned my room."

I straightened up at the sound of Levi's name. Levi was an attractive guy, even I couldn't deny that. The fact that he knew I liked Eren, the fact that he liked Eren, and the fact that he lived with Eren bothered me. I couldn't help but feel uncomfortable at Eren mentioning him. It made me feel...jealous, protective...possessive. I didn't like any of those feelings. 

I decided to lay down on Eren's bed. I had no clue why, but I just did it. He looked at me oddly and then sat on the edge of the bed, silent for a couple of minutes longer than comfortable. 

"Hey, Jean, how did you know you were gay?" 

I sat up and did a double take. 

"Uh, well, I dunno. I was friends with this kid named Marco ever since I was little, and when we were about 13, he just decided to kiss me. It made my heart race, and then I couldn't stop thinking about him, so I asked my mom, and she said that's what love was like. I thought it was weird for a guy to like another guy, but my mom said as long as I was happy, and I truly liked them, then it didn't matter who it was. I told Marco and he said that's what his parents said, so then...we just started dating. And it lasted until about a year ago, so I've never really had a chance to see whether or not I like girls, really. I was with Marco for 3 years, and then this move took about one, and now I don't really know anyone, except you." 

I looked over to see Eren staring at his hands, blushing madly. 

"Did you and Marco...y'know...do it?"

I chuckled and immediately understood why he was blushing. That was cute. 

"Yeah, we did."

Eren looked up at me so quickly I was surprised his head didn't fly off. He scrambled on all fours across the bed and sat in front of me with his legs crossed indian style, almost as if he were a 13 year old girl about to hear who her best friends first kiss was.

"How was it? Did it hurt? Who was top?"

"Uh, well...I mean, it kind of hurt the first time, because neither of us really knew what we were doing. I was top for a while, but then Marco decided he wanted to try it, and after that, we just switched whenever we felt like it. It feels good either way, so it wasn't really too much of a problem."

"It feels good?" He sounded so confused by that. The expression on his face was just laughable. I decided to try and have some fun.

"Mhm. Really good. I could show you, if you want." I winked at him and watched his face turn a new shade of red. He looked away from me and down at his clenched hands. He was hanging on to every word I said. 

I decided to make my move when he was looking down. I leaned over onto my knees so that I was looking down on him. When he didn't look up from his hands, I tilted his chin up with my finger and put my forehead on his.

"Jean, uh, what'r-"

He shut up as soon as my lips made contact with his. He didn't pull away, but he didn't kiss me back, either. I think he was just so stunned at what had happened, he forgot how to kiss. 

I pulled away and looked at him. He had cupped his hand over his mouth after I had pulled away and was staring me straight in the eye.

"I'm sorry, Eren. Did that make you uncomfortable? I thought maybe that's what you had wanted since you were asking so many questions but..." 

I looked away. I genuinely thought he liked me. I guess he was just curious about what it was like to be gay, but with how he was acting this morning...

My thought was cut off when I felt hands cup my face. I looked up to see Eren continuing to stare at me, but with completely knew emotion. 

I felt his lips touch mine and felt my heart begin to pound. I was scared he would hear it, but I didn't care. I wrapped one arm around his waist and pulled him closer to me and wrapped the other one to the back of his neck and played with his hair, twirling it around my finger. 

He pulled away and looked at me. He picked up my hand and placed it on his chest and I could feel how hard his heart was pounding. 

"Is this how you felt when you figured it out?

I nodded slowly and turned his face up towards mine and kissed him again.


	7. Chapter 7

A jerking motion woke me up out of a deep sleep and I opened my eyes. I saw Mikasa sitting up, sweating and breathing heavily next to me. She had her hand over her mouth to muffle the scream, but she had woken me up anyway. I sat up and wrapped my arms around her and rocked her gently.

"Was it the same dream?"

"As always. I'm sorry, I didn't mean to wake you." 

She laid back down and turned away from me. I rolled over onto my side and wrapped my arms around her once more. 

"Mikasa, you don't need to turn away from me. I'm here." I planted my lips softly on the side of her cheek and nuzzled my face in her neck. I could tell she was using the body wash I had bought her a couple of weeks ago.

"Mmm. You smell nice." 

"Quit being creepy."

"What? You stare at me for minutes on end without saying anything, I think I can appreciate that you smell good." I moved my arm down hers until I found her hand and intertwined our fingers. I gave them a quick, tight squeeze and was met with a longer lasting one from her. I turned her around with my other arm and she nuzzled my face with her chest. 

Her head almost reached the bottom of my chin. I chuckled, thinking about when we first started dating and how short I was. She was Eren's height, around 5'7'', but for a while I was much shorter than them. It was always so emasculating for me to have to stand on my toes to kiss her. Once I hit 16, though, I had a huge growth spurt and was a head taller than both of them. 

"Armin, you need a hair cut." 

"You don't like my hair long? I was thinking about letting it grow out and putting it in a ponytail." 

"No. No no no no no. Just, no."

"Why not?" I whined and gave her a puppy dog look. I really liked my long hair. It made me look like less of a child.

"Don't give me that face." 

She smiled and rolled over to get out of bed. I tugged on the bottom of her shirt and pulled her back and wrapped my arms around her as tightly as I could.

"I don't wanna get up yet. We're going back to sleep."

"Armin, it's almost 11. We're supposed to have lunch with Eren, remember?"

I groaned. I wasn't looking forward to seeing him. I had a feeling he wasn't going to be too happy with me, considering what had happened last night.

"He's not mad at us. It'll be fine. Eren can't stay mad at anyone for long."

"Fine." I really didn't want to go to lunch. I held on to Mikasa for a couple minutes longer and finally let go. She got up and slipped a pair of jeans on and changed her shirt. I was glad she did, I didn't think Eren would appreciate her sleeping in a shirt that was mine.

Mikasa and I were waiting for Eren to show up to the cafe for almost 45 minutes. We saw his army green bronco roll up, finally. We had picked a table close to the entrance so it would be easy to catch his attention when he walked in. We waved him over and he nodded his head up at us. He walked over to the table and pulled an extra chair up from the unoccupied table behind us.

"Why're you pulling up an extra chair?" Mikasa and I looked at each other, confused as to who he would've brought along.

He looked directly at Mikasa and smiled. It didn't even take a second for her to catch on.

"Really, Eren. You brought Jean. Really."

"Who the fuck is Jean?" Seriously. Who?

"What's your problem with Jean, Mikasa?" 

Who the fuck is Jean?!

"I don't know. I just think you could do better than him."

Better than who? What was I missing out on? God dammit it. I hated being left out of things.

Eren looked at Mikasa and gave her a smirk. She glowered at him and looked away.

Eren saw Jean walk through the door and beckoned him over. He kicked the chair out with his foot, almost demanding he sit next to him. Jean took his seat and smiled at Mikasa and then looked at me and stuck out his hand. 

"I'm Jean." He ended his sentence abruptly but it wasn't rude - it almost seemed as if he already knew who I was. 

"I'm Armin. Nice to meet you." I returned his handshake and smiled. I looked over at Eren and gave him an inquisitive glance as to who Jean was and what he was doing here, but when Eren blushed and looked down at the table, I knew immediately. 

We ordered our food and Eren and Jean had a conversation that I listened to none of. Eren had told me before he didn't really like girls, but I never realized it was because he liked guys. I always just thought he couldn't ever find someone he truly wanted to be with. 

I was also a little confused about Mikasa's statement earlier. It sounded almost as if she had known about Eren being gay, and didn't bother to tell me. Which is fine, knowing that Eren would eventually tell me himself, but what bothered me about it was her phrasing. It sounded as if she _knew_ Eren liked Jean, but didn't want him to be with him. It sounded as if she had someone else in mind for Eren. 

Before I knew it, we were paying the check and leaving. Mikasa and I hopped into my shitty 1990's Camry and Eren and Jean were in Eren's bronco. We had all decided to go back to Eren and Mikasa's house to play video games. 

"Mikasa, what did you mean when you said Eren could do better than him? Why don't you want Jean and Eren together? They look really happy..."

Mikasa shot me a sideways glance I pretended not to notice. I could tell she wasn't going to give up her answer easily. 

"I just think there's someone out there that's better for Eren than Jean."

"Who? I mean, I barely know him, I met him once, but it seems as if you haven't met him very many times either..."

I knew she was being biased now, and her reason wasn't that Eren could do better. 

"I think you can guess who I mean, Armin."

"I have literally not a clue who you are talking about."

"You'll see when we get to the house, I promise you."

As soon as she mentioned the house, a cold knot in my stomach grew. She couldn't mean...

Levi? And Eren? She wanted them together? But...they fucking hate each other. Last time I checked, Eren couldn't stand his existence. Why would she want them together?

The thought occupied me the entire way back. I didn't say one word to Mikasa, who didn't seem to mind, seeing as she was stirring thoughts in her own head about Jean and Eren. We sat in silence the whole way home. 

We finally arrived to their house and I went straight downstairs and onto the couch. Eren and Jean were already home and invested in a game of Mortal Kombat. Eren was kicking Jeans ass.

When Jean saw me enter the room he immediately greeted me with a warm smile and an invite to sit down. Once the round was finished he handed me the controller. 

"I'm hopeless at video games, I'd rather just watch. Kick his ass for me, will ya' Armin?" He flashed me another smile and completely took me off guard. He barely even knew me, why was he being so kind? 

I was always incredibly weary of people who were nice to me right off the bat. Even Eren, who stuck up for me when no one else did, was a dick when we first met. 

"Learn how to take care of yourself. No one is going to stop unless you tell them to." 

"I did tell them to stop...they just laughed at me..."

I still remember the smile he unwillingly let come to his face as he helped me up. 

"Well then, _I'll_ tell them to stop. They can laugh at my fists if they want to."

I chuckled thinking back on it. I guess Eren was being nice, in his own way. He always wanted me to stick up for myself, he always encouraged me to be stronger. He knew I didn't have much of a chance of getting people to stop, but he always made me try. 

Eren had always encouraged me to be a strong person. Not physically, but emotionally. When I was younger, I never really knew how to carry baggage. I always just let it weigh me down until I would sink down to the very bottom, but Eren would always pull me up. 

"Armin, you don't ever have to carry anything alone."

My nostalgia was interrupted by a new pair of footsteps coming down the stairs. I turned around to see Levi walk to the back of the couch and stand behind Eren. I immediately felt the air around Jean tense. I could tell that was exactly what Levi had wanted; to intimidate Jean. It worked. 

Levi walked over to the side of the couch Eren was on and sat on the arm rest. He draped his arm around the back of Eren's shoulders and let his hand fall down the side of Eren's arm. He looked down and smirked at Jean when he saw how red his face was and how white his knuckles were. 

"Hey, Levi." Eren took me off guard and actually _smiled_ at Levi. 

"Hey, Eren. I hope you don't mind, but I borrowed your shirt. I'm doing laundry and didn't have anything to wear."

"It's fine. I'm sure you look nice in a dress."

"Tch. Shut up brat." 

Were they...flirting? No. There was no way. 

Jean let out an aggravated sigh and stood up. When he walked to the minibar, Levi jumped at the opportunity to take Jean's seat.

"Jean, where're you going?"

"I thought I'd go upstairs for a bit."

To Levi's dismay, Eren jumped up and was right behind Jean within a couple of seconds. 

I saw Jean wrap his fingers around Eren's, and when Levi's smirk turned into a scowl, I knew he had seen it too. I chuckled to myself.

"Karma's a bitch, Levi."

"Shut up." 

"You're not going to get Eren any faster by manipulating Jean. I have a feeling he's much smarter than you think he is."

"I already know, kid. You're preaching to the choir."

Levi sighed and looked up at the ceiling. 

"There's just something about that kid that drives me crazy. I don't know what it is. Maybe it's the fact that he's not scared of me. When I'm a dick, he doesn't take it personally, he's just a dick back. When I'm angry, he knows, but it doesn't scare him." 

He paused, and I didn't know whether I was supposed to respond or let him keep talking. When I opened my mouth to contribute, he cut me off.

"But Jean...Jean's a problem. Jean is _exactly_ like Eren, but smarter. Jean cares for Eren a lot, so it's easy to manipulate him, but he knows when I'm doing it. He knows how I'm going to do it, why I'm doing it, and how to brush it off. He knows if he lets me manipulate him too much, it'll end up hurting he and Eren's relationship...

The worst part of it all is Jean knows that I don't know how to handle him. I almost get the feeling that Jean is manipulating me into manipulating him. I know that doesn't make sense, but..."

"No, I get it. I know what you're trying to say. It feels to you as if Jean is in control here, like he knows what you're trying to do by manipulating him."

"Exactly."

"So...why...why're you telling me all of this?"

Levi let out a sigh and looked straight at me.

"Because, Armin, I want your help. I want you to help me get Eren."

I looked down at my hands and thought about it. I felt bad about him telling me all of that and then asking me for help, but I couldn't do it. I knew it was hard for him to tell me that, but what he told me is the only way he knows how to get Eren is through manipulation. That just didn't sit with me well. He was completely disregarding whether Eren was happy all for his own selfish purposes. I wasn't too fond of Jean, but Jean knew what Levi was trying to do and he wasn't going to let it happen. I couldn't help but support Jean.

"I'm sorry, Levi. I know Mikasa supports you and Eren, but Eren is happy right now. I don't want that to be thrown away for your _chance_ to make him happy as well."

He chuckled and got up off of the couch.

"I understand, Armin. You're a good friend."

Am I?


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oooo! First smut chapter! Not too heavy on Levi/Eren or Jean/Eren, but I reaaaally wanted to do more on Mikasa/Armin sooo here ya' go
> 
> Oh and Armin doesn't sleep with a shirt on (｡♥‿♥｡)

I kept hearing giggling and the sounds of kissing and "stoooop" coming from behind the couch. Eren and Jean were acting like I was their fucking mom and "sneaking" kisses when they thought I couldn't hear them. This was really getting on my nerves.

"You're not thirteen, Eren. I don't give a shit that you're making out on the couch."

He sat up from Jean's lap and flipped me off.

"What the fuck is your problem? You've been a bitch all day."

"I don't have a problem, you're just pissing me off."

"Me pissing _you_ off sounds like a personal problem."

"It is, trust me."

I turned back around and sighed. I knew I had no right to be angry with Eren considering the whole Armin and I thing, but he and Jean just pissed me off to no end. Eren had truly _known_ him for barely even a week. If even. Levi had been living here for over a month and Eren knew who he was, what he was about, and was so _similar_ to Levi. I was probably being biased because I adored Levi in a badass older brother way, and I respected him, but I had a feeling Eren was expecting Jean to be like a prince charming and fall in love with him within the next month. I knew it was going to be more complicated than that.

I headed downstairs to find Armin sleeping on the couch and Levi nowhere to be found.

"Armin."

No response.

"Armin."

Still nothing.

"God dammit." I muttered under my breath. I didn't have the patience to wake him up softly.

I jumped over the couch and landed flat on top of him. He rolled over in shock and we both ended up on the ground.

"Owwwwww Mikasa!" He glared at me and rubbed the back of his head.

"There's going to be a knot there tomorrow."

"Stop whining. Maybe you should wake up when I call your name."

"Maybe you should wake up when I call your name." he mimicked me in a high pitched snotty voice. I punched him in the arm.

"You ready to go?"

"I dunno...it's only like 5 and I'm kind of tired and I don't wanna drive..."

"That's fine. I'll drive."

"Is something wrong?"

"Kinda'. Let's go."

I rolled off of him and nearly ran upstairs. I didn't really want to talk about it, because I knew it was selfish of me to want Eren to be with Levi, but I couldn't stand being around him and Jean any longer.

Armin finally jumped into my jeep and I took off.

We ended up on the highway, not really going anywhere, just going. The sun was setting and the sky was a dusted pink that slowly gave way to a deep purple, almost black.

"Hey Mikasa, when do we start school?"

"Uh, the second of August I think."

I saw Armin pull out his phone from the corner of my eye.

"Today's the 27th of July."

I sighed and took a right to exit onto the scenic byway. I knew a spot under the bridge by the river that was pretty hard to get to unless you had four wheel drive, and I intended to use mine.

We finally got there and stepped out. It was about 6:30 by this time and the night was getting colder.

I always kept a couple of blankets and sleeping bags and a tent in the back of my jeep because Eren and I had a habit of finding random places and liked to sleep there. I grabbed the blankets and laid them out beside the river bank and waved for Armin to come over.

I looked up at the sky and saw that the pink had given way to the dark purple and the dark purple had been pushed out by black. The stars were starting to pop up one by one.

I felt Armin lay down next to me and leaned back on my arms next to him.

I looked over at him to see him staring at me. Even though we had been together for two years, he still made my face turn a deep shade of red.

He laughed and pulled me next to him. I felt his lips on my forehead and turned another shade of red.

"I don't think I'll ever be able to handle how fucking cute you are, Mikasa."

"Shut up Armin, I'm not cute. You're just embarrassing."

"I feel like these roles are reversed. Isn't it normally the guy getting offended at being called cute?"

I nuzzled my face into his chest and took a deep breath. It was probably weird, but the way Armin smelled comforted me. He smelled like coffee and earth, like how it smells outside just after it rains. Every morning that I woke up on my own (as in, not being terrorized by nightmares) I would wake up to the smell of coffee. Even if he made it at 5 in the morning, the smell would linger with him the entire day.

I guess Armin never _really_ smelled like soil, but when he was younger, Eren and I would always find him in the garden with his grandfather. He loved their garden more than anything, and the joy he got when he tended to it stuck in my mind. No matter how hard I tried, I could never stop smelling tilled earth on his hands.

"Are you smelling me?"

"What? No. That's weird." I blushed again, but my face was still buried in his chest, so he couldn't see.

We were both quiet for a while, but after a couple of minutes he let out a long sigh and looked at me.

"Y'know, after this year, we have to go to college."

"Armin, are you still planning on leaving?"

He turned away from me and lay on his back, looking up at the sky. He took a deep breath and sighed.

"I'm not planning on anything, right now. I have a whole year to decide whether or not I really want to go, and that's even if I get accepted. Don't worry, even if I leave, nothing will happen to us. I promise."

He grabbed my hand and squeezed it. I squeezed it back meekly, stood up, and walked to the river bank.

I didn't want Armin to leave. I knew I had no right to want that, it was his decision, and he shouldn't base something so important off of me, but I couldn't help feeling selfish. All I had was him and Eren. I knew Eren would stay close to home, but still, without Armin, I didn't know what I would do.

I suddenly felt hands on my back and a second later felt cold water rushing all over my body. I immediately stood up and gasped for air and looked around to see Armin on his butt from laughing.

"You're gonna' fucking die."

It just made him laugh harder.

He stopped laughing when I took him by the collar of his shirt and started dragging him towards the bank.

"Mikasa, stop you're gonna stre-"

His sentence was cut short when he shrieked from being thrown into the icy cold water. This time, it was me laughing, because the sound that came out of his mouth was just straight childish.

"Shut up, it's fucking cold!"

"No shit, Armin, really?"

He got out and wrapped himself in a blanket. I checked my phone and saw that it was almost 7:00 and I could feel the night air creeping in.

"Armin, let's go back. It's gonna be cold tonight. We can't sleep here."

"Fine. My house or your house?"

"I don't really want to be anywhere near Jean or Eren currently, so I vote your house. Plus your bed is bigger."

He chuckled and gave me a sultry look.

"Not like that, pervert." I jumped into my jeep and locked the doors before he could get in. The look he gave me was pure gold.

"It's cold, let me in!"

"Only if you ask nicely."

"Please?"

"Not nice enough."

He sighed and gave me a spiteful look. I unlocked the door and let him in.

I woke up in a cold sweat and gasping for air again. I looked around and found myself in Armin's room, not the basement of my house ten years ago.

I felt a hand on mine and I instantly calmed down. My breathing stopped hitching and, even though my heart fluttered for a second, its beating returned to normal almost instantly.

"Mikasa." Armin whispered silently and squeezed my hand tightly. I laid back down next to him and he wrapped his arms around me tightly.

He had pretty slender arms, almost feminine, but when you ran your hands over them you could feel the natural rise and fall of the several toned muscles. His waist tapered in, probably more than mine, but he had a beautifully constructed torso, with lightly defined pecs and beautifully smooth abs. Unlike Eren's, whose muscles were sharp and full with deep indentations between each definition, Armin's stomach was almost as if his abs had been air-brushed on. They were definitely noticeable, but when I ran my fingers over them it was like running my fingers through shallow, soft valleys. I loved tracing the muscles on him. I could feel his muscles tighten when I glided my fingers across his skin. He was pretty ticklish.

He leaned down to kiss me but hovered over my lips for a couple of seconds. His breath was incredibly hot on my lips and I swallowed hard.

He chuckled and then pressed his lips hard against mine. It didn't take much for me to kiss back, but within seconds he was already trying to wedge his way into my mouth. I let him in immediately and felt his tongue hot on mine, wrestling for control. I gave up and let him explore my mouth, but when he tried to pull away, I caught his lips between my teeth and gave them a strong tug. I needed something to take my mind off of the nightmare I had just woken up from, and Armin was a perfect distraction.

He gasped tightly and glared at me in reaction to his lip between my teeth.

"You're going to regret that."

He wrapped his hands in the hair at the nape of my neck and pulled on it, tugging my head back and revealing the sensitive skin on my neck. I knew what was about to come and held my breath in anticipation. 

The minute I felt his lips on my skin I let out a quiet moan. He took the cue and dug his teeth into my neck, grinding the skin between his teeth and sucking on it. I grabbed the sheet and clawed at it. My neck was my most sensitive spot. He was driving me crazy.

I decided it was my turn. I put my hands on his shoulders and pushed him off of me and then rolled over on top of him. I leaned down and kissed him again, pulling away when he tried to pry my mouth open again, still catching his bottom lip and grinding it between my teeth once more. 

I got another angry glare but continued anyway. I made my way down Armin's neck, taking generous amounts of skin between my teeth and making sure that a streak of red would be there by the time school started. I could feel his breath catch in his throat and knew he was restraining a moan. I loved to torture him, so I ran my hand over the bulge that was slowly starting to rise in his pants. It worked. The moan that was kept behind his lips finally came out.

I continued to massage the now full sized bulge in his pants while I finished up with his neck. He started bucking his hips into my hand, so I used my free one to slam them down onto the bed. 

I moved my mouth down from his neck to his stomach, lightly dragging my tongue down the center of his stomach and stopping at the waistband of his pants. He looked down at me with such anticipation I couldn't help but give in. 

I slipped my tongue under his waistband and pulled it in-between my teeth. Once I had a good hold on it, I pulled it down to his knees and did the same with his underwear. Once they were both down to his knees he finished by kicking them off. 

Every time I saw him fully naked it always surprised me. He was built so slender, so tiny, almost as if he were stuck in the body of a too tall 12 year old...above the waist, at least. Armin was definitely a man below. 

I slipped my mouth over the head and swirled my tongue around it. I felt Armin's hips roll, trying to get me to take more of him, but I wouldn't have it. I slammed his hips down again, this time with both hands, making sure he wouldn't get out of control. 

Slowly I enveloped all that I could with my mouth and started moving up and down and up and down, still swirling my tongue over the tip when I came up. I felt his hands entwine themselves in my hair and let him take control. He dictated my pace, and when I felt that he could handle it, I released his hips. I used one hand to cradle his balls and the other to wrap around what my mouth couldn't, moving it in the opposite direction that his hips were. The deep moans that accompanied each thrust of his hips into my mouth were becoming louder and each time his back arched a little more.

"Nnnh. Mikasa..."

I took the hint and prepared myself for his climax. His thrusts became more and more sporadic and it was hard for me to keep up, but I was determined not to stop. 

I heard a loud moan and a split second later a thick, warm liquid was on its way down to my stomach.

I rolled over and crawled next to him, putting my head on his chest and listened to his rapid heartbeat. His hands were again entwined in my hair, but this time he was wrapping strands around his finger, gently playing with it. 

"Are you just going to stay naked?" 

I saw him blush and grab the sheets to cover himself as he got out of bed. He was pretty confident when he was full mast, (as he should be) but the rest of the time he was pretty self-conscious. 

He got dressed, putting on a new pair of briefs and slipping into a pair of jeans that made his ass look like a piece of candy. I had bought those for him, for that exact purpose, of course. 

Before putting on a shirt he looked in the mirror and saw the trail of red quite obvious on the side of his neck.

"God damnit Mikasa. This is going to be here when school starts."

"I know. I need to mark my territory. Especially if you're going to keep that long hair."

"Aha! So you _do_ like it!" 

I sighed and closed my eyes. This school year was going to be the death of me.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is kind of a shallow chapter, but I felt like I needed to take a break and that the work as a whole was getting a little too serious a little too quickly, so like I said in the beginning notes, I went with Mikasa and Armin because they're perf : )


	9. Chapter 9

I woke up in a room slightly familiar to me but not so familiar that I wasn't confused when I woke up in it. I looked around and saw a bottle of rum next to the bed on the floor and a couple empty beer bottles. I sat up to try and recollect where I was and how I got there. Looking around the room, I saw several band posters hanging on the wall and a closet that was color coded similarly to mine. (But way too colorful to be my own.) I got up out of the bed and my feet hit cold tile immediately. 

What the fuck was I doing in Eren's room? And where the fuck was Eren?

I went upstairs to see if Mikasa was awake to try and find some answers. She wasn't in her room and Eren wasn't in mine. I checked the carport and neither of their cars were there. I went back downstairs to grab my phone. I looked at the time and saw it was almost one in the afternoon. 

"God damnit. What the fuck?" I opened my phone and called Eren. He picked up on the second ring.

"Hello?"

His quick response caught me off guard, but the worried tone in his voice unnerved me even more.

"Hey, Eren, where are you?"

He didn't answer me immediately and I could hear him mutter something to someone on the other end of the phone. 

"I'm at Jean's, why?"

"Oh. Uh. I don't know. I woke up in your room and you and Mikasa aren't here so I was wondering what happened last night..."

He was quiet again. I couldn't hear what Jean said, but by the tone of his voice, I could tell it was bitchy.

"I'll be home in like two minutes."

"Uh, okay."

What happened last night? I was so frustrated. I walked to the kitchen and grabbed a bottle of asprin and a huge glass of water. My head was pounding. God dammit. 

I heard the front door open and close and looked up. I saw Eren walk through the door and was relieved to find Jean didn't accompany him.

My relief was short lived. Jean walked through the door ten seconds after I had let out a sigh. 

Eren pulled up a chair and Jean sat next to him. I noticed something was a little off about Jean's appearance and examined him closely. He had a large gash on one side of his cheek and his eye was black. My mouth fell open and for some reason, I felt like I was to blame for what happened.

"Uh..."

Jean looked at Eren, and when Eren averted Jean's gaze, he knew he was going to have to be the one to begin the conversation.

"Do you remember anything from last night?"

"Not really."

"What's the last thing you remember?"

I thought back to last night. It was really fuzzy and my head _fucking hurt_.

"I think the last thing I remember clearly was walking to the gas station and buying a pack of cigarettes."

I reached into my pocket to find them, almost out of habit, when I realized I wasn't wearing jeans. I was wearing a pair of sweats. I looked down and realized none of the clothing articles I was wearing were mine. I lifted the waist band of the sweats and found not even my underwear belonged to me. 

Jean took a deep breath and looked straight at me. 

"Something pretty bad went down last night."

What? Why wasn't he just telling me outright? What could've been so bad that he wouldn't just tell me straight? And why couldn't I fucking remember anything?

"Sorry. Could you repeat that?"

Jean let out a long sigh and stopped staring at me. He stared down at his hands in his lap and then, slowly, finally, looked back up at me.

"Levi, you were drugged last night. Probably almost raped."

I choked on the water I was drinking and slammed my glass down on the table.

"What the fuck did you just say?"

Eren finally shot me a glance and it stopped any more words from coming out of my mouth.

"You should probably be a little more grateful to the person that saved you, Levi."

What? What the fuck was going on? I let out a sigh of surrender.

"I'm sorry, Jean. Could you start from the beginning?"

Jean looked at Eren for encouragement. Eren nodded at Jean and let out another long sigh.

"The last thing you remember is going to the gas station to get cigarettes, but your pants are folded in your room, and when we changed you, there wasn't a cigarette pack in your pants. We don't really know what happened or where you went between the gas station and when we saw you, so I can't fill you in on that part, but we're assuming you saw someone and went to the bar with them. Eren and I were driving to blockbuster to go grab a movie and we saw you and some guy walking on the sidewalk. We thought it would be a fun prank to follow you and scare the shit out of you, so Eren turned the car around and started following you. You had a bottle of rum in one hand and two bottles of beer in the other. It was then that we noticed you weren't really...walking, per-say. It was more like you were stumbling or being dragged or a combination of both." 

Jean stopped, presumably to see if what he said triggered anything in my mind, but it didn't, so I nodded for him to continue.

"The guy you were with turned down a side street. We turned the corner and drove past you two to the old K-mart parking lot and got out. Eren decided it'd be best if we walked on foot to where we had seen you two stop so we didn't draw attention to ourselves. By the time we got there, you could barely stand, and the only thing holding you up was the guy pressing you against the wall. You weren't really saying any words, but you were shouting, and he kept having to put his hand over your mouth to shut you up. And then all of a sudden we heard another shout and your pants were on the ground and you were flipped over. And then after that, his pants were on the ground."

He stopped again, but not to see if I remembered anything, but because he needed to pause to collect himself. 

"What made me run to help you wasn't out of pure kindness. It was because, even though you were drunk, drugged, and _scared_ you still somehow managed to say no, even though you could barely talk a couple of minutes prior. It was then that I realized what was _really_ happening so I ran to help you. I jumped on top of the guy while Eren ran and put your pants back on and carried you to the car. He had a knife on him, which is where the gash came from, but I knocked that out of his hands as soon as he made a swipe for me and punched him right in the throat. He swung and hit me square in the eye, knocked me back a little, started pummeling my ribs, blah blah blah. In the end, I pushed him off of me and kicked him in the back and by that time Eren had come back and he helped me subdue him and then we called the police and long story short, you were almost raped and I saved your fucking ass. Literally." 

I had absolutely no clue what to say. Why the fuck, out of all the people I knew, did I have to be saved by _Jean_? Not that I wasn't grateful, but it was Jean. Jean. Seriously? I hated owing people things, but I especially hated owing people who I hated things. God dammit. It also bothered me how lightly he was taking the situation. I didn't let it show, but it really fucking pissed me off that he was acting so damn high for saving me. 

"Jean, I know a simple sorry or thank you isn't nearly enough but...thank you." It was hard to suck up my pride but I knew I had to do it. 

"So, wait, why did I end up in Eren's room?" 

This time, Jean looked at Eren and Eren let out a sigh.

"Well, you smelled like alcohol, cigarettes, and puke, your skin was a shade darker from being so damn dirty, and your pants had a giant hole in the knee. My room is the only room in the whole downstairs part of the house that is connected to a bathroom, so...we decided to bring you down there and we bathed you, hence why you're not wearing any of your own clothes and why you ended up in my room. We stayed up checking on you all night and around 8 we decided you were fine and we left to go to Jean's."

My face reddened in embarrassment. How the fuck did I let this happen? Actually, I knew exactly how it happened. I was pissed off about Eren and Jean, went to buy cigarettes, saw someone attractive, and here I am, being told I was almost raped, and that the kid I like had to clean puke off of me. Great. 

"Where're my clothes now?"

"They're in your room. I hung up your shirt and folded your pants and your underwear." 

"I'm so sorry." I was so ashamed of myself. I couldn't help but feel like it was my fault. If I hadn't been such a dic-

"It's not your fault, Levi." I was surprised to hear that. Not because the words were true, but because once again, they came from Jean. 

"Yeah, you made a bad decision to go out with someone you don't know, but it's not your fault he drugged you, it's his. It's not your fault he tried to rape you, it's his. None of this is your fault. It could've happened with anyone, someone you know, someone you don't know. Just because you got drunk with him doesn't entitle him to your body. It wasn't your fault." 

He was just saying everything I already knew, but I still couldn't help but feel like I had caused way too much trouble than I was worth. I nodded and said thank you one more time and headed into my room. I heard the front door open and close, Eren's loud ass bronco start up, and I closed my eyes. 

I was so selfish. Even though I didn't remember, I knew the only reason I went to the bar with that guy was to get laid and try and take my mind off of Eren. Considering I refused to fuck him, though, proved my strategy was a little off. 

I closed my eyes and started drifting back to sleep. Just as I was about to fall asleep I heard the door open and slam shut again. I pretended to be asleep because I really didn't want to have any more interactions with people for the rest of the day. 

Pretending to be asleep worked in my favor, or so I had thought. I heard my door open and heard someone walking on the carpet in my room. I felt, more than heard, my bed creak as someone sat on it. The hand that ran through my hair was soft and warm and comforting and it took all I had in me not to grab it. 

When the hand running through my hair stopped and my bed stopped dipping, though, I didn't care that I needed him. I felt him walking away from me and I turned around and grabbed his hand and pulled him back down to the bed and held him as tightly as I could. He didn't make a sound, he didn't turn away from me, he didn't resist, he just let me hold him. 

"Where's Jean?"

"He has a gym meet at 3 so I dropped him back off at his house."

"I hate him."

"I know. He hates you too." 

I felt Eren's body starting to quiver and looked up at him in confusion. He was crying.

"I'm so sorry, Levi. I couldn't do anything. I wanted to save you, I wanted to help you, I wanted to be the hero, but when I saw you and how helpless you were, you, Levi, of all people, I just...froze. I couldn't fucking do anything! It was all Jean. Jean who ran to you, Jean who beat the shit out of that guy, Jean who suggested we follow you and make sure everything was okay, it was all fucking Jean." He was pounding my chest with his fists and it was starting to hurt, but I didn't care. I just wrapped my arms around him tighter. It almost seemed like he was more upset about this than I was. 

"Are you mad at Jean?"

"No. Yes. I don't know. I shouldn't be. I'm not mad at him, I'm jealous of him, because now you owe _him_ something and not me. I don't know. I don't know why I feel like this. I'm sorry."

My heart was pounding. I knew I shouldn't be holding him the way I was, I shouldn't be letting him tell me all of this. I knew if I let this continue he would come to me for comfort, and I wanted that, but it wasn't the right type of comfort. He would only come to me when Jean was his problem, and that made me a rebound. I wasn't too happy about that. Even now, I was a rebound.

"Eren, were you really worried about me, or did you just want me to owe you something? 

He sat up straight and slapped me in the face. It fucking stung.

"Are you fucking serious right now, Levi? I was so fucking scared something was going to happen to you and I wouldn't have been able to do a thing about it. I was so scared you were going to blame me for not being able to save you, that you were going to hate me because if Jean hadn't of been there, I wouldn't have been able to do anything. I already fucking said that. What the fuck. Levi, seriously. What the fuck. I just fucking told you that I was terrified of something happening to you, something hurting you, and you seriously think all I want is for you to owe me something? I mean, yeah, it'd be nice if you could say 'hey, Eren, thanks for saving me back there, I really owe you one' or if it meant you could respect me a little more, but that is the farthest thing that was going through my mind when I saw how much trouble you were in.

He got up and left my room. God dammit. Why do I always have to say things like that? I wasn't even thinking when I said it. I don't even know if that's how I felt. I didn't really know how I felt. I turned over and fell back into an uneasy sleep.

###### 

It had been almost two days since the whole ordeal. I had put on a pretty good facade of pretending it didn't bother me, using the excuse that I didn't remember it anyway, so why would it? Mikasa seemed to want to believe me, and tried, and Eren didn't respond at all. He didn't seem to care. He was still pissed off at me. The only event I let them know that bothered me from that day was the fight with Eren. He hadn't been around very much, mostly at Jean's the past two days, only coming home for a change of clothes. When he was home, I was ignored, and if I _was_ graciously talked to, it was always civilly, with a tone of "leave me the fuck alone" or, "no, seriously, leave me the fuck alone." barely detectable.

The nice part about it, I guess, was that Mikasa was home the entire time once she found out. Eren had called her after our fight, and she came straight home, jumped in my bed and stayed in my room with me for the rest of the day. Armin stayed over the next day, but he and Eren got in a pretty large fight concerning the red road on his neck gifted to him from Mikasa, so he didn't come around too much after that. I don't think Eren really cared, but he just needed to take his anger out on someone, and since he didn't want to talk to me, he took it out on Armin. Poor kid. 

I looked at the calendar and realized it was the 29th. The four of them started school pretty soon. Eren and Mikasa were going to a private school, but seeing as Jean and Armin weren't as fortunate when it came to money, they were going to a public school down the road. I think Mikasa and Eren started earlier than the other two, but I couldn't remember. It didn't really matter. The house was going to be lonely without the two of them regardless. Oh well. I'd just request for more hours at work. They'd probably give it to me since a lot of the kids quit because of school.

I walked downstairs to grab a drink since someone (Eren) drank all of the coke from the ones upstairs. 

"I need to get some clothes for school today. Do you wanna' come?"

"No, I got my clothes earlier this week. Didn't you get clothes last year? I didn't think guys needed to up their wardrobe so often."

"Mikasa, I'm 17. I'm still growing. None of my pants fit and all of my shirts are too tight."

I saw my opportunity and I took it, shamelessly.

"I'll go with you, Eren."

He turned around and gave me a "are you fucking serious" look, but Mikasa pushed him towards me and he knew he couldn't refuse now.

"Uh, yeah, sure, that's fine. We're leaving now, though." 

I was so giddy. I was over-reacting, I know, but the thought of me being able to dress Eren up in whatever I wanted excited me to no end. I felt like a 12 year old girl getting a pony for her birthday.

I walked upstairs to grab my wallet and my phone. I barely had 50 bucks to my name, but I still wanted to buy Eren something. My paycheck would be coming in a couple of days, so I wasn't too concerned about it. 

I jumped into his bronco and we took off. Luckily he was heading towards the mall that had a lot of higher end shops in it. I had a preconceived idea of exactly what I wanted Eren to look like and I wasn't going to give it up unless he killed me. 

It was then that it occurred to me his school may have a uniform. My heart sank just a little.

"Do you have a uniform since you go to a private school?"

"Mmm, not really. I can't wear anything casual, like jeans or a t-shirt, but as long as it's not that, I'm fine."

Oh lord. I was relieved to hear that he didn't have a uniform, but just picturing Eren in a pair of tight fitting pants and suspenders with a button-up shirt was driving me crazy. It took me everything I had not to let him know it from the sound of my voice.

"Oh, that's weird. I've never heard of a private school not having a uniform."

"It's not really a private school, more of a liberal arts school. I mean, it is private, because you have to pay to go there, but it's not a religious school or anything. You have to do an audition or sample whatever you're going there for to get in."

"What're you there for?" I had never bothered to ask them about school since I had been living with them the entire summer. It never occurred to me that they could have extracurricular activities. 

"Mikasa's there for writing, I'm there for jazz." 

My head turned so fast I gave myself whiplash. I winced at the pain but he didn't notice.

"Jazz?" Oh damn. Oh damn. Oh damn, damn, damn. 

"Mmm. Well, really, blues guitar, but they don't have a blues program there, so I go for jazz guitar."

The image of Eren in suspenders playing blues guitar was enough to make me want to tear his clothes off.

"Why come I don't ever hear you practice? And where's your guitar?"

He glanced at me with a suspicious look.

"Have you really never been to the back yard? There's an entire studio out there. A drum set, all of my guitars, two of my dads basses, a ton of shit. I'm surprised you didn't know." 

We finally arrived at the mall and I immediately started dragging him around from store to store. He kept complaining that all of the stores were too fancy, but I didn't care. He only picked out a couple of shirts, no pants, and every time I gave him my opinion on something, he did the complete opposite. Finally, I had had enough, and dragged him into the store I had been waiting for him to go in, but he never did. I think he was avoiding it on purpose.

"I have plenty of clothes now, lets go."

"No, you don't, you didn't buy any pants. I thought you didn't have any that fit you?"

He sighed and walked into the store. He started going to through the racks with the more casual clothes, but I steered him away from them and started piling clothes on top of him. He finally convinced me he had enough and walked to the dressing room.

"You have to show me these."

"Fine." 

It took a couple of minutes, but he finally came out. The outfit he had chosen wasn't too bad - a sky blue long sleeved shirt with a pair of dark khaki pants. The way he had it on, though, was what made me laugh out loud. His shirt was untucked, and seeing as he had picked out a large, it was hanging down almost as far as his shirt hung down on me. His sleeves were way too long for his arms and they hung out over his hands, and his collar was completely lopsided.

"Eren, what on earth. Are you serious? How did you ever get a girlfriend?" 

"Shut up."

"That shirt is way too big. Take it off and give me all of the larges and I'll go get you the right size."

"Fine."

I waited outside his door and he finally handed me all of the shirts. I gave them to the dressing room attendant who returned with the right sizes. I flung them over the door and waited. 

When he came out I swear my jaw almost unhinged. It was like a completely different person had walked out of that dressing room. Without me telling him a single thing, he had tucked in the shirt and rolled the sleeves up to his elbows. He still left his collar lopsided, but it made the look even hotter. 

He had picked out the same sky blue shirt to try on, and now that it was the right size, it hugged his body _perfectly._ The button up hugged his large chest, accentuating how well defined his upper torso was. The shirt clung to his sides, showing the small taper in his waist that drove me insane. The sleeves bunched up just enough on his arms to show where his muscles rose when he reached his arms up and over the back of his head. 

The pants, though, were on a completely different level. I couldn't tell how perfectly they fit him last time because of how low his shirt hung, but now that his shirt was tucked in, they revealed how long his legs were and how his thighs gracefully tapered down into smaller, but still muscular, calves. The fabric ruched a little at his groin and made me think of how nice it would be to rip those 40 dollar pants right off of his body. 

My voice was caught at the top of my throat and I had to clear it several times before I could get any words to come out.  
I got some pretty weird looks from Eren while I was doing that but I just turned around and pretended to start coughing.

"Eren."

"Hmm?"

"Turn around."

I didn't care how loudly I swooned or how he turned around to give me a weird look. His ass looked so fucking firm I just wanted to grab it.

And I did.

Eren jumped out of his skin and I laughed.

"Sorry, I couldn't help myself. Anyway, we're getting those. Are those all the same shirt styles?"

He nodded, still too pissed off and embarrassed to speak. 

"Are the pants all the same?"

He nodded again.

"Good. I'm going to go grab you some cardigans."

"Wait right the fuck there, no you are not!" 

"What's wrong with cardigans?"

"I dunno, they're kinda...girly..." 

"Tch. Shut up, brat. Wait right here, you'll see. These won't be girly."

I came back and handed him several different types of cardigans, all that would drive me absolutely insane if he put them on.

Which he did. And I was right, they drove me mad. 

I had picked out several different types, some like vests, some like sports jackets, some military style, and some traditional types. He seemed to favor one in particular, a traditional type cardigan that buttoned straight down the middle. It had a green wool torso with a beige stripe down the button panel and around the collar, but the sleeves were black. 

"Jesus christ."

"What?"

"Nothing." I could feel my face getting hot. It wasn't normal for me to get flustered at just someones appearance. I liked this kid way too much. 

I left him in the dressing room to keep trying on the cardigans and pick out which ones he liked best. I grabbed a salesman and asked him if he had any suspenders. He went and grabbed a pair and handed them to me, and I threw them over the top of Eren's door.

"Put these on."

"Why?"

"Because I said so." 

I heard him groan and take off one of the cardigans and clip the suspenders to his belt.

When he walked out, I literally squealed. Suspenders were my thing. Suspenders were everyone's thing. God dammit. Fuck. Shit. I couldn't think about anything except how hot he was. Fuck. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. I had completely lost my composure.

"Are you okay?" 

I couldn't talk so I just nodded. He walked back into the dressing room, unclipped the suspenders and took off all of the clothes. He slipped back into his normal gym shorts and t-shirt, handed the attendant the clothes he wanted and went to go pay for them. He had left the suspenders behind in the stall. 

I picked them up and brought them to the counter. They were 40 bucks, just under my budget. I let out a sigh of relief and stood in line behind Eren. 

"What're you buying?"

"A present for you."

He rolled his eyes and finished paying for all of the clothes. I bought the suspenders and handed the bag to him.

"You're going to wear these for me, one day."

"Pft, yeah right." 

We walked to the car without saying a word. I could tell he was still incredibly mad at me. He had every right to be. He had worried about me, opened up to me about it, and I completely disregarded all of his feelings because I thought he just wanted to show off and be the hero. 

We got to the car after what felt like an eternity. I finally decided to suck up my pride and tell him I was sorry.

"Eren."

He didn't respond.

"Eren."

Still, nothing.

"Ere-"

"What?!" He pretty much screamed at me. I sighed and clenched my fists together.

"I'm sorry." 

He was quiet for a while and I thought he was ignoring me, so I decided to repeat myself.

"Eren, I said that I-"

"I heard you the first time."

That shut me up real quick. 

"When I saw you shoved up against that wall, barely being able to stand, I was so pissed off, for several reasons. One, because who the fuck did they think they were, shoving _you_ , the strongest person I know, emotionally and physically, into a wall? Who the fuck did they think they were to give them the right to abuse _you_? To abuse anyone? The person I looked up to the most was being molested and I was fucking furious. Two, because I was fucking jealous. Every single day I have to fight with myself between who's better for me, you, or Jean. I come to the same conclusion every night, that it's Jean, and when I'm with him, I have no doubt, but the fact that I have to fucking fight myself over it infuriates me. When I'm with you, I have every doubt. I have no right to call you mine, but when I saw that, that was the first thing that came to my head. And then the other guy that I like, the guy that you hate, the guy who hates you, saves you, not me. I couldn't do anything. And then, I tell you how concerned I was about you, how worried I was, how scared I was for you, scared that I was going to lose you, scared that you were going to hate me, and you think it was because I wanted you to _owe me something_? You seriously think you taking me shopping and saying sorry afterwards is going to fix everything? Really?"

"No, Eren, I know me saying sorry isn't going to fix anything, I just wanted to let you know that I am." I held my breath, determined to continue, but what was about to come out was going to be hard to say. 

"I told you and Jean that I didn't really remember things, and I didn't, and I still don't, but I do remember something that kept replaying in my head over and over and over and over. I kept thinking 'I don't want to do this, he isn't Eren. I don't want to do this." 

I paused for two reasons: one, to compose myself, and two, to see if I had elicited any type of reaction from Eren. To my dismay, his face was still stoic, still completely unresponsive.

He didn't say anything the rest of the way home and neither did I. His face finally made me realize that the only way he was going to be able to get over this was by himself and I couldn't do anything about it.

We pulled into the driveway but he didn't park under the carport like usual.

"Where're you going?"

"To Jeans." He sped out of the driveway and drove off.

God dammit.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know I said the other day about how I thought it was getting too serious but idk some stuff came up and it brought me here so idk idk idk w/e there you go


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ooooo Jean and Eren get a little hot tonight c;

I felt my alarm go off and hit the snooze button. It was August 2nd, the first day of my senior year, and I fucking dreaded it. I tried to will myself to go back to sleep for the next 15 minutes, but I absolutely couldn't, so I just got up and went to make breakfast. I made the baked apples with cinnamon that Eren made when we first ate breakfast together. I scarfed them down (I'm always starving in the morning for some reason) and then brushed my teeth.

When I walked into my room I realized I had no idea what to wear and that I only had 20 minutes to get to Eren's. He was going to drive Armin, Mikasa and I to school, since the school Armin and I were going to was on the way to theirs. I didn't want to look too concerned about my appearance but I wanted to impress Eren and show him that my wardrobe didn't just consist of gym shorts and tee's. Although, now that I think about it, that was all he wore around me for a while as well. Eh, whatever.

I picked out a pair of dark wash straight leg jeans and an almost too small blue and white baseball shirt. Not too fancy, but still a bit better than sweats on the first day. I grabbed my bag, hopped on my bike, and rode to Eren's house.

I knocked on the door and Mikasa answered it, looking as stunning as ever in a black skater dress with a mesh cutout that went from the top of her chest to her collarbones. Her jet black hair was piled on top of her head in a messy bun and she had a perfect velvet cat eye makeup. I swear, if I weren't gay, Mikasa would be type of woman. Too bad she despised my entire being.

She turned around, not saying a word to me, and walked away from the door. I walked in, dropped my bag in the foyer, and went downstairs to Eren's room.

I was met with a sight I'll probably never forget - Eren in tight black pants and a khaki green button-up with brown leather suspenders. You will never understand how badly I wanted to destroy him in that single moment.

I walked up behind him, turned him around and kissed him. He jumped at first, but then he kissed me back, slow and patient as always.

"Well good morning. What was that for?"

"I dunno. Just wanted to remind you that you're mine before you went off to a school full of attractive men and women." I wrapped my arm around his waist and pulled him closer to me. I wasn't really worried about school, I was more worried about Levi. I didn't know what had driven Eren to spend so much time with me lately, but I had a feeling it had something to do with Levi.

"You don't have a thing to worry about. Promise." He kissed me on the cheek and finished getting ready, sweeping his long brown hair to the side and slipping on his brown and white oxfords.

"You ready?"

I nodded and headed up the stairs, grabbing my bag and walking to the car. When I got there, I found Armin, who smiled at me, and Mikasa, who glared at me, in the back seat, leaving shotgun open. I had a feeling Armin had convinced her to let me sit next to Eren.

I started to wonder what was taking him so long. It had been almost ten minutes since I had been in the car and even though it was only about 70 degrees out, it was starting to get hot.

He finally came out, carrying one guitar on his back and one in his hand along with his bookbag on one shoulder.

"I couldn't decide what guitar to bring so I brought both..." He looked kind of embarrassed and Mikasa scoffed at him but Armin nor I said anything.

He hopped into the car and we finally took off. I tried not to show it, but my hands were kind of shaking. I think Armin noticed because he asked if I was okay.

"Yeah, I'm fine, just a little nervous."

"Hopefully we'll have a lot of classes together!" He sounded so encouraging I couldn't help but smile.

"Yeah, I hope so. What classes are you taking?"

To my dread he started listing off all sorts of AP sciences and maths and English - the only class we had both scheduled was AP Euro (history is my thing) and I doubt we'd have the chances of having that together.

"I think the only thing we're taking that's the same is history. Hopefully we'll have that together."

It was kind of quiet for the rest of the ride there and it just made me more and more anxious. We finally arrived to school and as I was getting out of the car I saw Mikasa and Armin kiss each other goodbye. I went to shut the door but heard a scoff from Eren.

"What?"

"You're not gonna' kiss me goodbye?"

Oh damn. I swear my face turned a shade of red undiscovered. I leaned over the seat and gave him a kiss goodbye, still blushing, and walked into my new high school.

It was almost 6th hour and my English class was getting boring as hell. There were only 10 minutes left and we were still taking notes on symbols and themes of _1984_. None of my other teachers were making us do anything today considering classes were only 40 minutes long so this was kind of aggravating.

It turns out that Armin and I did have Euro history together which left me incredibly relieved. I had made some new friends, particularly two obviously gay (to me, at least) guys named Reiner and Bertholdt, a girl named Sasha, and some goofball named Connie, but they were all in one class, and so far I hadn't met anyone else that I wanted to talk to.

The teacher finally let us stop taking notes with 5 minutes left to spare. I heard two girls next to me talking about a really cute gay guy who had just moved here and I couldn't help be curious about it. I knew it wasn't me, because they wouldn't be so bold as to say that with me next to them, but the fact that he was new, gay, and apparently cute sparked my interest. Not that I needed him to be cute, but having attractive friends was almost always a positive rather than a negative, I guess.

The bell rang and it took me almost all 5 minutes to get across the school to my mythology class. I finally found the classroom and walked in, checking my schedule to make sure that I had the right room number.

"Jean."

I stopped dead in my tracks. I knew exactly whose voice that was before I even had to look up. I had heard it hundreds of thousands of times - I had heard it happy, I had heard it sad, I had heard it angry, and I had more than definitely heard what it sounded like when it needed a release. God dammit.

"Marco."

My heart was pounding. What the fuck was he doing here? I had moved an entire school district away from him - not because of him, but still, away from him. I hadn't spoken to him in more than a year and now he was suddenly in my 6th hour? The smile across his face made me want to punch him. What the fuck.

He beckoned towards the seat next to him and I took it. I wasn't planning on staying here, but I wanted to know what the fuck he was doing here.

"What're you doing here, Marco?"

He chuckled and leaned back in his chair.

"You didn't hear? Rose High was having too large of freshman classes so they split the school district in half, and I happened to be on the side that had to come here. What, do you think I'm stalking you or something?"

I scoffed and picked up my bag to move, but my bag wouldn't leave the floor. I looked down to see Marco's foot on top of the strap refusing to let me lift it up.

"Sit with me, Jean, I don't know anyone and you don't know anyone. C'mon."

I sighed and gave in. He was right, I didn't know anyone in this class except him and I really didn't feel like trying to make friends. By the time I had gotten here, it seemed like everyone had already gotten into little groups and I definitely wasn't up for trying to squeeze my way in to any of them.

Mythology ended up being pretty cool. My teacher was super enthusiastic about it which in turn made me just as happy about it. I think, if Marco hadn't of been there, that would've been my favorite class of all day.

"Where're you going next, Jean?" I felt another twinge of pain when he said my name again; I couldn't stop thinking about how sad it sounded the last time I heard it.

"Uhhh, health."

"With Shadis?"

"Yeah..." God dammit. Another class with him? I can't believe I would be spending the last two hours of my day with him. I sighed and started walking next to him.

"So, how was your summer?"

"Not too bad. Had a bunch of gymnastic meets and stuff. Nothing fun." I neglected to tell him about Eren - not because I wanted him to think I was open, but because the last time Marco got jealous, I barely escaped a black eye. He had a pretty bad anger problem underneath the cute, sweet, soft-spoken exterior he provided to people.

It's not that he wasn't a nice guy, because he was. Probably, in terms of friendship, he's the nicest person I've ever know. He and his family did so much for me. Our families were really close and we grew up together. He was raised to be considerate and kind and caring and loyal, and he was all of those. It's what he was _as well_ as those qualities that made him hard to be with as a lover.

"How about you?"

"Not too bad, just spent it in Florida like always and then got ready for school."

"How was it?"

"It wasn't too bad. It was kinda' weird without you, though." I knew he said that to make me sting a little, which it did. I had been going to Florida on vacation with the Bodt family since I was 5.

We finally got to the classroom and sat down, again, next to each other. This time, though, Bertholdt and Reiner were in there with me, so I had a little bit of an escape from Marco. I introduced the three of them and we all sat down in a group.

"Hey, Marco, are you that cute gay guy all of the girls are raving about?"

"I don't think so. They say he moved here recently, but I haven't moved, I still live in the Rose school district, I just go to school here."

Marco glanced at me and gave me a wink that the other two couldn't see. So were those girls really talking about me, or Marco?

"So you're not denying the cute or gay part, are you?" Reiner's question seemed kind of intimidating, but I knew he really just wanted to see if his gaydar was on point. Which it was.

"Not denying it one bit!" Marco flashed them a smile and they both laughed. Reiner patted him on the shoulder in reassurance.

Health ended up being pretty boring. It was taught by the football coach and considering most of the kids in the class were football players (sophomores, nonetheless, almost as bad as freshman) he didn't really talk to the class as a whole very much. The four of us just talked about our summer activities.

It turns out Reiner used to be in gymnastics before he started doing body building competitively, so he and I talked about that for a while. Bertl apparently used to run track with Eren before Eren went to the Liberal Arts school, but I didn't want to disclose very much information on Eren and I, so that conversation ran short.

I checked my phone and saw that Eren was going to be a couple of minutes late since rehearsal didn't end until 2:40 instead of 2:30. My school got out at 3:00, and since the LA school was about 30 minutes down the street, I told him Armin and I would wait outside for him.

I was standing against the wall waiting for Armin to show up when I heard a set of footsteps approaching. I looked up to find not Armin, but Marco. I let out a disappointed sigh and faked a smile at him.

"What're you still doing here, Jean?"

"Waiting for my ride. They're a little late."

"Still don't have a car, eh?" The way he said that kind of ticked me off. It was his fault I got in a wreck and had my car taken away in the first place.

"Yeah."

"So..." I hated when he did that "so" thing. It meant there was something he quite obviously wanted to talk about but didn't want to be the one to bring it up. I found out within the first month that he would use that in a fight, saying that I had brought whatever "it" happened to be up, not him.

"What, Marco." I made sure not to end the sentence in my voice rising, because I wanted to let him know I was absolutely not interested in what he had to say at all.

"Hows the love life?"

"None of your business."

"Alright, alright, I'm sorry, I was just curious." He threw his hands up in a defensive state as if I had just screamed at him. In reality, my voice was as monotone as ever. It failed to make me feel guilty any longer.

I saw Armin walking up and walked towards him. I threw one arm in the air and gave Marco a half-ass wave without looking at him and turning my back. Just as Armin walked up, Eren pulled up as well, blaring smooth jazz and the windows rolled down. He stopped, Mikasa hopped out the front seat and into the back, and I took this opportunity to show Marco exactly how my love life was.

Since Marco was facing the drivers side it was easy for him to see every one of my actions; I leaned over the seat, pulled Eren's face towards mine slowly, and kissed him. I opened my eyes in mid-kiss to see Marco with his hands clenched at his side and fuming. I closed my eyes and continued to kiss Eren. When I was satisfied, I pulled away from a blushing Eren, winked at Marco as a big "Fuck you" and Eren pulled out of the parking lot precisely when Marco flipped me off.

When we got on the interstate, Eren rolled his windows up and turned down the radio. He gave me a weird look and raised his eyebrows in reaction to the random and fervent kiss I displayed to his friends and the mysterious kid watching us with angry eyes and clenched fists.

"Jean..."

"Hm?"

"What was that?"

I saw out of the corner of my eye Armin and even Mikasa bend in slightly to try and catch the soft tones of our conversation. I'm sure they were just as curious, if not more, than Eren.

"What was what? You make me give you a goodbye kiss in the morning, but a hello kiss in the afternoon is weird?" I tried to play it off as if I had just missed him today, which I did, but I didn't want to tell him that my ex-boyfriend of three years was now going to school with me and had a serious jealousy streak.

"Shut up, Jean. That's not it." I _swear_ Mikasa's voice sounded like a demonish growl - if not for Armin and Eren to hold her back, I had a feeling she would've punched me. "I saw that kid flick you off."

"What business is it of _yours_ , Mikasa? Did you think, for possibly one second, that it was _none of your fucking business_?

She opened her mouth in response but decided not to say anything. Armin nor Eren defended her, they both knew I was fed up with her abusing me and treating me less than a human being because she didn't want Eren and I together. It was quiet the rest of the way home. No one said anything and Eren just turned up his Snarky Puppy.

When we got home Eren nodded at me and went downstairs. I followed him to his room and shut the door behind me, not wanting to be interrupted.

He laid down on his bed and put his arms behind his head. He stared up at the ceiling for a while, probably wondering how to approach the subject of who that kid was and why I wanted to piss him off so much.

"Jean..."

"What?"

"Don't even pretend like you don't know what I'm about to ask."

I sighed because I didn't know whether I should kiss him before I told him about Marco or after. I opted for after.

"Eren, remember me telling you about my ex-boyfriend?"

"Marco?"

"Yeah."

"What's he got to do with it?"

"Well..."

I averted my gaze, as hard as it was to look away from those brilliant blue-green eyes, I just couldn't look him in the face. I had no idea how he was going to react to this.

"Apparently, Rose High had too many incoming freshman, so they split the school district up, and Marco ended up going to Maria. With me. He asked me how my love life was going, and I told him to fuck off, but then you drove up and I had a better ide-"

My sentence was interrupted by Eren pushing me over and kissing me deeper than I had ever kissed him. He didn't start with those small kisses that work their way up; he started open mouth, deep, aggressive, and **hot**.

I didn't know how to respond except to kiss him back. I was so surprised that he was reacting this way. I excepted him to be pissed off and felt like I used him to make Marco jealous, which, I kind of did, to be honest. It wasn't my main goal, but it was definitely on the list. I had wanted to show Marco that he needed to back off, but I also wanted to show him that I was more than capable of capturing someone's interest just as easily as I had captured his.

Eren ended the kiss eventually, going in the reverse direction and slowing to small, sparse kisses that he smiled through. I loved all of his kisses - the deep ones, the small ones, the sloppy ones, the wet ones. It didn't matter as long as his mouth was on mine and his arms were around me. As long as I knew he was mine I was happy.

"Eren..."

"Hmm?"

"Why?"

He smirked and laid his head down on my chest. I could smell his hair (I'm weird I know whatever) and it smelled like flowers. I giggled and ran my hand through his hair.

"Tell me why you're giggling and I'll tell you why I kissed you."

"Fine. I'm giggling because your hair smells like flowers, you pansy." It was a horrible pun, but his face got red hot and he started sputtering defenses.

"I was out of shampoo and I had to use Mikasa's but all she had was _girl_ shampoo s-" I tilted his head up and kissed him softly.

"Why'd you kiss me?"

"Tch. Wouldn't you like to know."

I put my hands on the sides of his waist and turned him on his back. He was being cocky because he thought he was in control, but even though he was built like a bull, it was easy to move him when he wasn't expecting it. As soon as he was underneath me the cockiness flew out of his eyes and was replaced by a look of surrender. I couldn't wait to dominate him.

"Why." I made sure to ask him in the most demanding voice I could muster, barely even a question, more of a direction to tell him what made him respond that way.

"I dunno. I mean, when you kissed me, it turned me on, knowing that you were showing me off. Regardless of who it was, you were still showing me off and that made me feel good, y'know? Like you wanted him to know that you weren't letting me go anywhere and he couldn't take you away from me. And then when I found out it was with Marco, someone you had loved for three years and been with in every way imaginable...I dunno. It just made me really want to kiss you, knowing that I was being marked as your property and waved in front of his face. That should probably piss me off, but it doesn't, it makes me happy knowing that you would chose me over him."

I kissed him again. I kissed him the same way I kissed him in the car and this time, he returned it with just as much intensity. I loved exploring his mouth and feeling his tongue brush against mine and the way he tasted drove me _insane_. 

I couldn't take it anymore. I wanted to know what the rest of his body tasted like, what his soft skin felt like under my rough hands. I broke the kiss and nudged his chin up with my head. I swiftly bit down on his neck in case he had any protests, which, he didn't. He let out a gasp and I sucked on the spot I had bitten and ran my tongue over it to dull the pain. I slipped my hands under his shirt and ran my hands over his chest and felt him rise under me. 

"Jean, don't do that." 

"Do what?" I ran my hands over his nipples again, giving one of them a light squeeze while digging into his neck with my teeth again.

Eren let out a breathy moan and let his hips rise again. "That, don't do that."

"Why not, you seem to enjoy it?" This time I squeezed both of his nipples and his moans got a little louder. He didn't respond to the question, giving up on trying to resist. 

I could feel him hard on the inside of my thigh. I shifted him under me so that our hips were aligned perfectly and then I trust into him while still teasing his now perky nipples. His moans were now incredibly loud and hot right in my ear and I wanted to hear more of them. I slipped my fingers under his suspenders and snapped them before pulling them down and unhooking them from his pants. I untucked the rest of his shirt and lifted it over his head, taking a couple of minutes to observe the beautiful body under me. 

I let my hands trace each individual muscle on his stomach and then moved my way back up to his chest. I continued to tease one nipple with my hand but on the other I began sucking, flicking my tongue over the top and occasionally biting it. He started to buck into me harder and harder, trying to gain some release from the friction, but I wouldn't let him. With my free hand I steadied his hips and continued working on his chest.

"Jean..."

I looked up at him and gave him a questioning look, but my question was answered when I saw the expression on his face. He needed more and I was going to give it to him. 

I went back to work on his nipple with my mouth but slowly started to move down his chest, leaving long, hot kisses all the way down his stomach. I got to the waistband of his pants and pulled them down a little, revealing a beautiful "v" leading downwards and took the liberty of following it with my tongue. I unbuttoned his pants, giving me a little more leeway to pull them down and continued to follow the trail. When the pants stopped once more I unzipped them, pulled them off and threw them on the floor. I glanced up at Eren to make sure it was okay to continue and he gave me a nod of approval, as well as a look filled with pure lust.

I slipped my finger under his waistband and dragged it down to his knees, then lifted his legs with one arm and pulled the briefs off with another. I looked back and realized how large he was. He wasn't necessarily long, but he had a lot of girth. I shuddered thinking about what it would feel like to take him in the ass. 

I licked the base of his dick all the way to his head and then gave it a couple flicks with my tongue, hearing him moan and grab for the sheets. I stuck my two of my fingers into his mouth which he welcomed graciously and began to suck on. I took all of what I could in my mouth and started a pretty constant motion but after a while he began to buck into my mouth and I had to hold his hips down. 

I took my fingers out of his mouth and looked up at him. I gave him an evil grin and let my dry fingers wander around his body going lower and lower until I found his ass and with my other hand I gave it a good squeeze and looked up once more as I started to tease his small hole.

"You okay, Eren?" I wanted to make sure that he knew what I was going to do so he had an option to decline. He didn't, though, and I slowly pushed one finger through, letting it sit, waiting for him to adjust before moving in and out. After I was sure he was comfortable I began to slowly thrust in and out of his ass with one finger, and barely a minute later he started begging me for another. 

"Jean, more. You can do more." He could barely talk now, and if his body hadn't been telling me on its own, I probably wouldn't have understood what he was saying.

I slid my second finger inside of him and started to explore, trying to find his prostate. I could tell I was close to hitting it, and then, all of a sudden, I found it.

"Jean!" Eren shouted more than moaned and started to ride my fingers violently. By this time I had my other hand on his cock, pumping it to the same rhythm of my fingers. I could tell he was close and started thrusting my fingers faster to match his writing body. 

He let out one more moan and I felt him contract around my fingers and felt a warm liquid on my other hand. I pulled out of his ass and walked to his door to hand him the towel hanging there. When he wiped the cum off of his stomach and I wiped it off of my hand I lay back on top of him and covered his face in kisses.

"I told you bottom felt good."

He giggled and nuzzled his face in my neck. I kissed the top of his head and rolled to the side of him to wrap my arms around him and hold him as tightly as I could. We laid there like that for probably two hours, and I think he fell asleep, but I didn't. I sat there watching him, wondering what he was dreaming about. He was a completely silent sleeper. He never made one sound, he never talked, and you could barely hear him breathing. I had woken up in the middle of the night forgetting he was there sometimes, only to be scared shitless when I rolled over and felt another body in my bed. 

After a while I heard someone calling Eren's name from upstairs. I woke him up, or "disturbed his eyes from resting" as he groggily put it. He put on a shirt and a new pair of underwear and pants and we walked upstairs to see Mikasa almost in tears and clutching a sticky note, presumably Levi's. 

"What, Mikasa? What's wrong?" Eren went to take a step forward towards her but she backed away.

"Levi..."

"Levi what?"

"Levi...Levi left, he took all of his stuff and left, and I don't think he's ever coming back."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know this Marco doesn't really fit the personality of canon Marco, but I've always liked the idea that Marco was a big softie on the outside but was pretty manipulative on the DL and that the only reason that Jean stayed friends with him was because he knew Marco was really a good person but had been manipulated by his parents as a child and was pretty fucked up from it. So essentially Jean stayed with Marco because he loved him and Marco was his best friend and he wanted to try and "fix" Marco as much as he could so yep there's that and also if you dig jazz-funk/jazz fusion you should totes listen to Snarky puppy pls


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this took so long to get out! I'm normally pretty quick on the rebound when it comes to writing new chapters but I've been super busy this week. This is gonna be a pretty heavy chapter for both shippers...oops. Sorry guys ;)

I sat in my car beside the Shell gas station at two in the morning, staring at the sliding door and watching the people come in and out. Every time the doors opened I squeezed my steering wheel in anticipation but I was always let down when it wasn't him. Jesus, when he said he worked the night shift, he really meant it.

It had been almost two months since Levi left the note saying he was leaving on the fridge. I still remember every letter written down on that small, pink piece of paper. I remember every curve, every "i" dotted, every "t" crossed. 

_Eren, Mikasa. I'm sorry to have bothered you both for so long. I'm sorry to have been such a burden, I'm sorry I overstayed my welcome. I've decided its time for me to leave, its time for me to stop relying on two people who don't need me nearly as much as I need them. I'll still be cashiering at the gas station if you ever need me or want to come say hi. I don't expect you to. Anyway, there's $250 on the top of my dresser as a weak attempt to pay you back for all you've done for me. I know that's not even close to what I owe you, but it's all I had, so I gave it to you._

_Thanks for everything,  
-Levi_

It had been almost two months since I had felt like the worse person in the world.

I knew it was my fault. I knew it was because I was such a dick, and I wanted to milk my anger, that he left. I knew it was because I shunned him, because I paid absolutely no attention to how he was feeling. I knew it was my fault.

Mikasa knew it was my fault, too. And she let me know. Every time I talked to her we would end up screaming. Every day on the way to school she would be stone quiet, not even letting a word out to greet Armin. Every day she shut herself in her room and didn't come out except to eat. I don't know what Levi was talking about when he said we didn't need him - he held this family together, if you could even call it a family. 

Jean had been my savior these past couple of weeks. Every minute I was with him nothing else mattered. I was always happy with Jean. I was always smiling, always laughing, always _feeling_ with him around. I relied on him to keep me afloat and to safeguard me from any emotions that were unwanted. 

He didn't understand why I needed him so much, and I would never tell him. I would never tell him that the only reason I needed him was because Levi was gone. Levi told me he was worried about becoming a crutch when something was wrong with Jean and I, but really, it was the other way around. Jean had become the crutch once Levi left. 

I still liked Jean, of course. Nothing had changed about my feelings for him, I would still pick him over Levi if the choice presented itself to me. If Levi came back and said "I'll stay if you pick me" I'd tell him to leave. I just needed Jean to give me the courage to be able to say that, even though that would never happen.

I saw a girl with brown hair and glasses come out and lock the two sliding doors. Did I really just sit there for almost an hour waiting for Levi to get off of work when he wasn't even here? 

I got out of the car and walked towards her. I recognized her because Levi had brought her over to the house once or twice, I think. Her name started with an "h" or something. 

"Hey."

She jumped and turned around. She had one hand on the side of her belt and I figured she thought she was about to get assaulted. 

"Oh, it's you." She relaxed when she recognized my face and then gave me a questioning look.

"Uh, sorry, I just closed up the gas station..."

"That's not why I'm here."

"Why're you here, then?"

I handed her an envelope with Levi's name written on it. 

"Give this to him." She took the envelope out of my hand and kept giving me this weird, weird look. I started walking away.

"How long were you here for?"

"Almost an hour."

"He doesn't work here any more."

I stopped dead in my tracks. What?

I reached for my phone. I pulled it out of my pocket, hit the speed-dial and waited for it to ring.

" _We're sorry, the person you are trying to contact is not available right now. Please try again later._ "

I turned around to face her again. 

"You didn't come for almost two months. That girl didn't come either, but that probably wouldn't have made a difference. He wanted you to come. He decided that you were never going to come and he had no reason to stay here. He left, he bought himself a different phone, since you and that girl had bought him the one he had. He moved."

"Where does he work now?"

"I don't know."

"Do you know where he lives?"

"Nope."

"You're lying."

"Sure am. He's happier without you. Let him be. Leave him alone. He loved you, and you couldn't see it because you were too selfish and only wanted to hurt him as much as he hurt you. That drives people away. Now your sister hates you, he hates you, and you hate you. I can see it. If you didn't hate yourself, you wouldn't have come here. Now leave."

I couldn't move. Everything she had said was true. I drove him away _again._ I drove him away because I was too scared to look at him because I knew I was being selfish. By doing that, I was being even more selfish, and I pushed him to a place I'd never be able to reach. Ever.

###### 

It was almost Christmas. Jean and I were still together. Mikasa stopped hating me. I was happier. Kind of. Every now and then, I would still have a nagging feeling like something was missing. Like when I would look at the fridge and not see any pink sticky notes, or I would walk past his room and see the stark white walls with nothing covering them, the closet empty, and no bed on the floor. Every time I saw something that reminded me he wasn't there, I felt my heart go to the deepest pits of my stomach. It was hard to pull it back up when that happened, even for Jean.

School was fine, I guess. Jean had a couple of new friends. I had known them from when we went to middle school, or, two of them, at least. Jean seemed pretty fond of Reiner and Bert. Apparently, they swore they weren't gay for each other, but every time Jean asked them if they had girlfriends, they switched names. Reiner started out with some girl named "Christa" and Bert started with some girl named "Annie" but the next time Jean asked, Reiner was with Annie and Bert was with Christa. Yeah, totally not gay. Tch.

I hopped in the car with Mikasa to go pick up Jean and Armin. We were all going to Bert's house later for a bonfire. It was nice of him to invite Mikasa and I, seeing as he hadn't seen us since we were all like, 13.

I was pretty excited for it. I hadn't really ever been to a party because I never really had any friends other than Armin and Mikasa. I was stoked to meet some new people and maybe, finally make some friends of my own.

Mikasa had warmed up to Jean by now. When she realized he wasn't going to take any more of her shit and was going to be around for a while, she backed off. She had even started joining in on Armin's teasing us that we were an old married couple. 

We all just hung around at the house until it was time to go to Bert's. I changed so I wouldn't look like a giant pretentious douche since we were now forced to wear a tie every day. Jean said he liked it, but I hated it. I hated being dressed up. 

We got to the party and I reintroduced myself to Reiner and Bert. Jesus, Bert had grown. He had always been a tall kid, but he was a fucking giant now. Even Armin had to lift his head up a little to look at him, and Armin was pretty tall. 

Reiner had really filled himself out. He used to be a skinny little twig, but Jean told me he did body building now and I could definitely tell. He had gone from a stick to a tree trunk. Good lord, I didn't know that was even possible. Jean drug me around the party, introducing me to all of his new friends. I met two goofballs named Sasha and Connie who Jean seemed to really like. They were okay, a little silly for me, but still, if Jean liked them, so did I. 

I met a couple of more people whose names I honestly don't remember, which is bad, because I should've made more of an effort to remember Jean's friends, but whatever. Its not like I wouldn't be meeting them again. I hung around with Armin and Mikasa for a little while and chastised them for secluding themselves from the party. They shrugged it off and joined a table with Reiner and Bert. I joined with them and we all started talking about the middle school days, laughing about shitty teachers and how Bert had accidentally gone into the wrong locker room in P.E. and changed in front of all of the girls without noticing. I used to think he did it on purpose, but the way he acted with Reiner, I doubt he had. 

I felt a tap on my shoulder and turned around. Jean was standing beside me with a really solemn look on his face.

"What's wrong?"

"Nothing, just, c'mere. I wanna introduce you to somebody."

This was weird. Jean was happy barely even 5 minutes ago. What could've made him so upset, and who would be so urgent for me to meet that he couldn't tell me what was wrong?

I rounded the corner and understood who it was immediately. He was leaning on the wall with one leg propped up. He had a beer in one hand and his other hand was occupied by a clenched fist.

"Eren, this is Marco. Marco, this is Eren."

"Sup, Eren."

"Hi."

What the fuck was I supposed to say? Why was he here and why was Jean bothering to introduce us? 

"You Jean's new toy?" 

I shot a glance at Jean, because I had honestly no clue what to say. I didn't want this kid to do anything to Jean if I said the wrong thing. From what I could tell, he was already pretty drunk and Jean had told me he had a pretty bad temper. I'm sure I could hold my own, but I was scared of what he might try and do to Jean.

"Toy?"

"Yeah, y'know, his toy. It's not like Jean would ever _really_ go for someone like you, right, Jean?" He shot a look at Jean and gave him a flash of white teeth. I hoped this was just the alcohol talking. 

I grabbed Jean by the hand and turned to leave.

"C'mon, Jean, we're leaving. Don't waist your time on him. He's too drunk to talk to right now." Jean followed me, but I turned around, not finished.

"And no, I'm not his _toy_. I'm his boyfriend. Got it? He's mine. Leave him alone." I tugged on Jean once more and he followed again, still not saying a word. 

We went inside and sat down on the couch. I looked at him, but he wouldn't look at me.

"Jean, did I say something wrong back there? Are we not..."

"No."

"No what?"

"No, you didn't say something wrong. We're together. I just..."

"What?"

He sighed and looked up at me. I saw a little bit of a smile on his face and relaxed.

"It's nothing, Eren. Don't worry about it." He kissed me on the top of my head and walked out of the living room to join the rest of the party. I saw him sit next to Reiner and Bert and knew he was fine on his own, Marco wouldn't try anything with other people around. I wandered around Bert's house for a while, looking for a bathroom. His house wasn't very large, but it was really charming. It felt like a cottage, one that you'd come home to in the middle of winter to find your grandmother cooking a huge, warm dinner.

I finally found the bathroom and wandered back outside. I sat down in an empty chair around the table and just listened to the conversations everyone was having. I really enjoyed this group of people. 

The more I listened to the conversations the more I realized I didn't hear Jean's voice. I know I was probably making it super obvious that he and I were together, but I didn't care. 

"Yo, Eren, Jean went out the side gate to the front yard. Said he needed to get something out of your car or something."

"Thanks Reiner."

I walked out of the side fence and turned the corner. I couldn't see them, but I heard two people talking, voices low, and stopped dead in my tracks. 

"Marco, stop."

"Stop what, Jean? Isn't this what you like?"

"Marco..." I heard Jean take a deep breath and let out a long sigh. "Its true. I still love you, but..."

"C'mon, Jean. Its fine."

I had heard enough. I didn't turn the corner to see what was happening. I knew well enough what was happening. I went to the back yard, took a deep breath, and pretended not to have any clue.

"You find him?"

"Nah, I didn't look too hard though. Hey, Reiner, is there any fast food places around here?"

"Mmm, no. We have plenty of food in the house though."

"Eh, I'm just really craving some of those giant Arizona Teas."

"Hmmm...there's a Walgreens down the street, three blocks after First street."

"Cool, I'll be back in a bit."

I needed a walk to decide what I was going to do and how I was going to approach Jean. I knew Marco was going to be a problem the first day Jean told me he started going to school with him, but I didn't realize it was going to be _this_ big of a problem.

God dammit! Why? Why couldn't Jean just tell him to leave him alone? Was I really just not good enough for Jean? After almost six months with him, I still wasn't good enough? 

He had made me so fucking happy. How could I mean so little to him when he meant so much to me? 

I finally got to the Walgreens. I still had absolutely no clue how I was going to handle Jean. I walked straight to the drink aisle and picked out as many of those giant ass cans that I could hold. It was only four, but whatever. 

I unloaded the drinks onto the counter and reached for my wallet in my back pocket. I was so preoccupied by Jean I didn't even think to look up at who was ringing up my drinks.

"Eren."

My head shot up as soon as I heard that voice. The next thing I knew I was staring at steel grey eyes and dark black hair. 

My heart stopped. I swear it, it really did. It stopped beating, and then all of a sudden, it started beating so quickly it hurt. I couldn't breathe. 

He looked the exact same. Cold, strong, beautiful. I wanted to reach out to touch him and make sure he was really there and not me hallucinating from pain. I stared at him with an open mouth and wide eyes. I couldn't handle this right now. This was the last, and first thing I needed. 

I decided now wasn't a good time for me to talk to him. I was too emotionally unstable. I just handed him my credit card and had him bag my drinks. I headed for the door.

"Wait outside. I'm off in ten minutes."

I didn't say a word, I just obeyed him. I sat on the bench outside and thought about leaving. Every time I saw someone leave the store, I would tell myself "you can leave, too." But I never did. My feet wouldn't move. 

Finally, after what felt like hundreds of people had come in and out of the store, Levi finally came out. He lit a cigarette and sat down next to me. 

"Yo."

"Hi."

We were quiet for a little while. 

"Did you get my letter?"

He nodded, reached into his back pocket and pulled out the envelope that had the $250 dollars he had left and a letter from me. 

"Have you read it?" 

"Yeah."

I didn't know what else to say. Well, I wanted to say a lot of things, but I didn't know how to put them. I wanted to tell him what just happened with Jean, that I missed him, that I needed him, that Mikasa needed him, that we _wanted_ him. Words wouldn't come to my mouth, though.

"Why didn't you come?"

"Because I was scared. I didn't want to see you look at me like you hated me."

"I will never hate you." 

I turned to look at him and saw him staring straight at me. I couldn't look away from him. I was scared to look away from him. 

"Levi..."

"What?"

"Please come back. Come home." I slammed my fists down on the bench. I didn't know how to process all of the feelings that were surging through me. 

"We need you. Mikasa needs you. _I_ need you."

No, that wasn't right. Not entirely. I was being selfish again. I wanted him more than I needed him. I had made up my mind a while ago that I wouldn't depend on him, and I was determined not to. That didn't mean I couldn't want him, though.

He didn't respond. He sat there smoking his cigarette. I sat watching him. The way it illuminated his face when the red-orange light got close to the filter was almost intoxicating. With every inhale he got more and more beautiful.

"Look, kid..."

His voice trailed off and I took the opportunity to respond.

"Stop calling me a fucking kid. I know I fucked up, but that doesn't make me some ignorant child. Quit with that shit."

I felt a soft hand grab a handful of my hair and even softer lips collide with mine. I tried to pull away, (out of pure surprise, honestly, not because of Jean) but the hand on the back of my head wouldn't let me. We stayed with locked lips for what felt like forever, and just when I had decided I wanted to give in, he pulled away.

I don't know why I did what I did next, but almost as if it were instinct, I wrapped my hand around his waist and pulled him in for a kiss of my own. When our lips met again I could feel my stomach filling with butterflies and my heart breaking at the exact same moment. I don't think I will ever experience a feeling like that ever again. 

He was a very gentle kisser, completely different from what I had expected; I had expected him to be dominant and harsh, but he took his time, parting my lips with his tongue and exploring the inside of my mouth slowly. He tasted like stale cigarettes and green tea and it was intoxicating. My hand traveled up his back and into his hair, brushing the back of my hand against the rough undercut and entwining my fingers in the rest of his hair. It was kind of a shitty place to have a first kiss, on a bench outside of a Walgreens, but the kiss itself would've been perfect had I not felt like the worst person in the world. Again. 

"Please come home, Levi." 

"That's not my home and you know it, Eren. I don't belong there." 

"Don't make me beg you. Please. I need you, Mikasa needs you."

He let out a sigh and stood up. He flicked his cigarette butt into the parking lot and looked at me. 

"I can't come home, Eren. Not yet."

"Why not?" I couldn't wrap my mind around the idea that he didn't want to come back. I had imagined the scenario several times in my head (of course, that was all at the gas station six months ago) and every time, I always imagined him coming back without a second thought. 

"I hate coming in second place, Eren. As long as I'm second to you, that house will never truly be my home." 

Without even a sideways glance at me, he walked away. I didn't follow him. I knew nothing I said would change his mind and I knew if I tried any harder I would end up in a pathetic mess of tears. 

Tonight was just not my night.


	12. Chapter 12

Everything around me was moving so quickly. Too quickly for me to take it in. I looked to the side of me to see Armin holding Mikasa's arms behind her. In front of me, Reiner was running inside Bert's house to grab paper towels and a cold pack of peas. To the left of me, Marco was cradling a bloody and broken nose. It seemed as if everything was out of focus. I couldn't hear what was going on except "what the fuck just happened" inside of my head over and over and over again. Seriously. What the fuck just happened?

My hearing finally came back to focus and I heard an exchange of shouting between Marco and Mikasa. Armin was obviously trying to hold back a laugh, and Sasha and Connie were exchanging "oh shits!" "ooo" and "buuuuurns" each time a new sentence (shout?) was added to the dialogue.

"What the fuck do you think you're doing, you cunt?"

"What am I doing? What the fuck are _you_ doing? If someone tells you to get the fuck off of them, you get the fuck off of them! _Especially_ if they're _my brother's fucking boyfriend!_

Oh. Well, that was out. At least it shut Connie and Sasha up. Well, really, it shut everyone up.

I felt everyone's eyes go straight to me, but then I realized they left me and scanned the crowd for the missing person. My eyes wandered through the crowd to find Eren as well, but he was nowhere to be found. 

I walked up to Bert who was covering his mouth to hide the fact that he was cracking up. I probably would've been laughing too, if I could comprehend what just happened. 

"Hey, Bert...you seen Eren around?" 

"Mmm, last I saw he was heading for the Walgreen's. It's three blocks after First if you wanna go looking for him."

"Thanks, man." 

What great timing, Eren. You had to go on a walk when Marco was hitting on me and Mikasa decked him in the face for it? 

I turned the corner and started heading up towards First. It was really dark outside by now, and exceptionally cold out. I pulled my black trench coat around me tighter as I felt the wind starting to blow. I could see my breath and realized it had to be at least below freezing outside. I hoped Eren had enough sense to have brought his coat on a midnight walk in the middle of winter in New Jersey. 

I felt something cold and dry fall on the tip of my nose, and almost immediately after I had registered it was there, it turned soft and slowly dripped off of my face. I looked up to see it snowing and _really_ hoped that Eren had brought his coat. 

I got to the second block after First Street when I saw someone walking towards me. I squinted my eyes to see who it was, and sure enough, it was Eren. 

I stopped in my tracks and waited for him to approach me. He was staring at the ground, not paying any attention to where he was going or who was in front of him. I took a step to my left purposefully so he would run in to me, which he did.

"Oh, uh, sorr-"

"Eren."

His eyes widened at the sight of me and then his brows furrowed and I saw his green eyes flash with something I couldn't identify.

"What are you doing, Jean?"

"Coming to get you. What are _you_ doing, Eren?" 

He sighed, took a step to the side, and continued walking towards Bert's house. I could tell he was ignoring my question. 

"Eren."

Man, this ignoring shit was really getting on my fucking nerves.

"Eren."

We were almost to Bert's house by this time. The way back seemed a lot quicker than the way to get Eren. Maybe because he was purposefully trying to avoid walking with me. 

I decided to try and get him to talk one more time before we got back to the bonfire. I would get him to fucking talk. 

"Eren."

When he didn't respond the third time, I took his wrists and pushed him against the wall. He turned his head away from me, but I wouldn't let him get away with being such a fucking ass.

"We're not leaving this spot until you tell me what the fuck is wrong with you."

He tried to push me away but I wasn't going to budge. I had never seen him act like this. Yeah, there had been days when he was down, but they were never this bad. 

"Why don't you go and ask your precious little Marco what's wrong, Jean? Since you _love_ him so much."

My jaw dropped. This kid. This fucking kid. He thought he knew _everything _. I was so...infuriated. I wanted nothing more than to make him angrier than I was.__

My palm connected with his cheek and I felt a stinging sensation run through my entire hand. Eren stood there, stunned, eyes wide, with his hand over the red mark my hand made. 

I grabbed his hand and led him in silence to the seen that I _hoped_ was still unfolding in Bert's backyard. If he could just understand that it didn't go the way he thought it did, this whole thing would be resolved.

We finally got to Bert's back yard and to my relief Mikasa was putting band-aids on her knuckles and Marco had a bag of peas over his nose. Eren was looking back and forth from Mikasa to Marco, who promptly flicked both of them off when he caught their eyes.

Eren walked over to Mikasa and sat down next to her. He was still not paying any attention to me.

"What happened?"

"No, first, you tell me where you went." 

"I just took a walk to cool off some steam, Mikasa. Now tell me what happened." 

Mikasa sighed, knowing that wasn't the whole story, and everyone else knew it too, but she and I both had a feeling he wasn't going to tell what happened in front of a ton of people he didn't know. 

"Fine. I don't know what happened beforehand, but I saw Jean leave, and then five minutes later I saw Marco leave, and then like five minutes after that I saw you leave, and I thought that was all pretty fishy. Honestly, I thought you were going to go try and fight Marco or something, but then you came back and the other two didn't, and I thought that was _really_ weird, so I went out there. When I got there..." Mikasa looked to me for reassurance and I gave her a nod. Eren was more likely to believe her than to believe me, so I let her tell him. 

"When I got there, Marco was trying to convince Jean to get with him, but Jean wasn't having any of it. He kept telling Marco that he was with _you_ and Marco couldn't change that, and I swear Marco was about to hit Jean, so I stepped in and knocked him in the face. That's about it, really." 

Eren looked at me, then Marco, then Mikasa, then back at me. He opened his mouth to say something, and his mouth started to move, but no words came out.

"Eren, say what you're going to say. Looking like a goldfish is pretty unbecoming of you."

He shot Mikasa a look but she didn't back down. He finally stopped glaring at her and turned to face me. 

"Jean, I'm..."

"What?" 

"Sorry. I didn't mean to be such an ass." 

"It's cool, Eren. Don't worry about it. I was just worried about you." 

"Uh, Jean..."

"What, Eren?"

"Why're they all looking at us like that?"

I looked at the crowd surrounding us and realized what he was talking about; they were all looking at us as if they just witnessed a really shitty soap opera. 

I let out a breathy laugh and shook my head. "I'll tell you later. Let's go home, Eren."

He smiled, but I swear, when he turned to leave, I saw his eyes soften and turn wet.

###### 

I rolled over in a bed almost as familiar as my own to see a sleeping brunette next to me, breathing so quietly I wouldn't have known if I couldn't see his chest rise and fall. I turned to look at the clock and saw that it was almost 8. Eren would be a little pissed we slept in, but whatever. I decided to get up and make breakfast since I knew he wouldn't want to run this late. 

I got out of bed and threw on one of his shirts off of the floor; his room was incredibly dirty lately. Seemed like ever since Levi left, he's been a complete slob. Not a surprise. I guess he had been a slob the whole time, but Levi just cleaned up after him. 

I heard a groan and the bed creak and felt a hand tug at the end of my shirt. 

"Jean..." 

"What?"

"What time is it?" He rubbed his eyes from sleep and I swear he looked like a five year old after waking up from a nap. This kid was way too cute sometimes. 

"You're gonna be mad."

"Why? What time is it?"

"It's 8."

He jumped up out of bed faster than I could blink and ran to the bathroom to start a shower. He was the only person I knew who couldn't _stand_ sleeping in. That actually was the cause of our first "fight". Really, it was just a petty argument because I'm grumpy when I wake up and yelled at him to shut the fuck up. It "hurt his feelings" but really, I think he just likes to argue. He's so fucking stubborn sometimes. 

I walked up the stairs to see Mikasa already starting breakfast and Armin watching some stupid early morning host show with the sound muted. 

"Want some help?"

"Nah, I got it. Thanks though...uh, Jean."

"What?"

"Why're you wearing Levi's shirt?"

I stopped dead in my tracks. I couldn't help but feel a hard twang of anger and jealousy in my stomach. 

"Uh, I don't know. I guess he left it here or gave it to Eren. It was on Eren's floor so I thought it was his and just threw it on..."

I waited for her reply but there was none, so I headed downstairs to change before Eren could see me wearing this fucking shirt. I felt like burning it. I threw the shirt on the ground and picked up a different one off of the floor. I tried looking for mine, but I couldn't find it. Oh well. Both of our closets were filled with each other's shirts; his shirts fit me fine, if not a little large, but all of my shirts were now stretched beyond attractiveness; it's not like Eren was the size of Reiner or anything, but his shoulders were definitely a _lot_ larger than mine. 

I decided to lay back down on the bed, knowing that as soon as Eren got out of the shower, I wasn't going to get any more sleep until tonight. 

I heard the door open and before I knew it, I had a 17 year old boy wrapped in a towel pretty much jumping on top of me. 

"Jean, wake up, wake, uuup!" 

I pushed him off of me and rolled over. He left me alone to get dressed, but I felt him climb into the bed behind me and nuzzle his face into my neck.

"Jean..."

"Hmm?"

"I'm so sorry." 

I turned around and wrapped my arms around him as tight as I could. 

"It's okay. I think I know what happened last night."

"No, no, I don't think you do, Jean..." 

"Well then tell me, Eren."

"Promise you won't get mad?" 

I held my tongue after that question. I already had an inkling this was about Levi, but after that, I knew it. How could I tell him I wasn't going to get mad when I _knew_ this was going to hurt? 

"I can't promise anything, Eren. But regardless of what it is, I won't leave." 

He let out a sigh I can only imagine to be of relief. 

"Okay, so, I noticed you were gone from the table and I asked Reiner where you went. He said you had to go get something out of the car so I went to find you, but then I heard you and Marco talking...and I just got so _pissed_ when you said you still loved him that I left. I understand what you meant now, but I couldn't then, I thought...I don't know. I thought I didn't mean anything to you, and god dammit Jean, you mean _so_ much to me." His voice was shaking. I knew what was coming next would've destroyed me if I had let him tell me, and I honestly don't think that I would've been able to take it. 

"Eren, let me tell you something right now. I already have an idea of what happened; you got mad, you left, you somehow miraculously ran into Levi, but the rest? I don't want to know. I don't want to know what you did out of anger or despair or jealousy. I just want to know that you'll never do it again, and that you'll come to me before you make any idiot decisions, okay?"

He looked up at me and smiled. I kissed that perfect, perfect smile, and ran my hands through his beautiful thick brown hair. 

"You smell like flowers again."

"Shut up."

For the first and last time ever, we fell back asleep.


	13. Chapter 13

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> >   
>  It's 11 AM and I'm sitting in a restaurant  
> 3 beers in. Believe me, even I'm surprised  
> I'm still alive sometimes.  
> I have been drinking about you for 2 days.  
> Lately you remind me of a wild thing  
> chewing through its foot. But you  
> are already free and I don't know what to do  
> except trace the rough line of your jaw  
> and try not to place blame.  
> Here is the truth: It is hard to be in love  
> with someone who is in love someone else.  
> I don't know how to turn that into poetry.
> 
> -Clementine von Radics 

I woke up slowly, rubbing my groggy and unclear eyes before sitting up straight. I looked to my right to see a sleeping Hanji, hair everywhere, an open, drooling mouth, and tanned shoulders barely being contained within a loose tank. 

I tip-toed out of bed so as not to wake her. For being as ecstatic as she always was, it certainly took her some time to adjust to the morning. Grabbing my phone, I checked the time. It was 8:34 in the morning. I had work in an hour. 

Knowing I wasn't going to be able to eat a large breakfast, I started a pot of coffee and began peeling an orange.

After drinking my coffee and eating my orange I looked at the clock to realize I had been wasting too much time doting on what I was going to say tonight and wasnt going to be able to take a shower. Whatever, though. Lately, as much as I valued cleanliness, I had been almost as bad as Eren when it came to cleaning and showering and taking care of myself. Maybe it was because I didn't have anything or anyone to make proud anymore. Normally I cleaned because I wanted to and it made me feel good, but lately, looking at the disastrous amount of clothes all over Hanji and I's room, I felt overwhelmed. 

I slipped back into the room to get dressed. I almost had my shoes tied when I heard a groan and knew I had failed to let her sleep. 

"Where are you going?" 

"I have work, Hanj." 

"Nnnnn." Her last word was inaudible as her face hit the pillow and she fell back asleep. That was lucky. Normally she wasn't able to go back to bed and I was blamed for it. She would've been bitter all day.

I walked out of the door and headed for work. The Walgreen's I worked at now was only a couple of blocks away from Hanji's apartment, thank god. That gas station I worked at was convenient when I was at Eren's house, but at Hanji's place, it was three miles away. I liked not having to call a cab every day to go to work. 

I pulled out a cigarette from my pack and lit it. I knew it was a waste because I would get to work before I could finish it, but whatever. I needed to organize my thoughts and that small piece of cancer sure did the trick. 

"Yo', Levi, what're you doing here?"

I looked up to see one of my coworkers standing outside of the sliding doors. "It's your day off." 

I felt my jaw crack in irritation as I realized today was Saturday, not Friday. God dammit. I really needed to make a habit of checking the date, not just the time.

"That's the third time you've done it! Do you just really need over-time or something?" 

I gave him a half-assed wave and walked back to Hanji's apartment. Shit. This meant I had nothing to do today. I guess I could go back to Hanji's apartment and clean but that sounded so _taxing._

I needed to pack, too...

###### 

I looked around the room. It was spotless, not a fleck of dust even floating around the air. I sighed and looked at my "suitcases" (a couple of backpacks. Fuck rolling baggage.) and went through their contents to make sure I had everything I needed. I looked at the clock and realized it was 7:30 already and Hanji would be home in a little while. 

I decided to shower once more, making sure I smelled and looked as fresh as I could before I left. I took out a pair of briefs, a pair of jeans and a long-sleeved shirt from one of my bags and brought them into the bathroom. I stripped down, ran the hot water, and got in. 

Today - no, tonight, was going to be hard. Explaining to Hanji that I was leaving, without giving her any notice whatsoever was such a dick move and I knew it, but if I had given her a heads up, I would never be able to leave. Hanji's power over me was far too great to let me make a decision she disagreed with. I tried to rehearse what I would say to her in my head, but every time my thoughts drifted to me not being able to leave. I realized this shower wasn't going to give me any revelations, so I washed up and got out. 

I got dressed and put the dirty clothes in a plastic bag and stuffed them to the bottom of the backpack. I had just done all of my laundry today, there was absolutely no way I was going to let dirty clothes touch fresh ones. I called a cab and told them to be here by 8. Hopefully it wouldn't be too early.

I heard the door open and shut and knew Hanji was home. I hid my bags behind the bed and closed the closet doors so she wouldn't notice my wardrobe missing. I heard hear gasp as she walked through the small apartment, looking at how clean everything was. 

"You cleaned! It looks wonderful. Thank you. Now I have space to do all of my labs for class." I nodded, returning the hug she gave me upon seeing the apartment. I walked out of the bedroom and into the...dining room, if you could call it that. I sat down at the table and pointed to a seat across from me. She gave me a weary look and sat down.

"Hanj."

"Oh fucks Levi, what did you do?"

"I didn't _do_ anything, not yet, at least." 

Silence.

"Hanj, I..." I bit my lip hoping the words that had escaped my mind would come rushing back, but they didn't. It was as if someone had stolen my entire vocabulary. "I'm leaving."

"What?"

"I can't stay here any longer. I know its horrible of me to drop this on you, but I didn't want to tell you in advance because you'd try and stop me, but I have to."

"Where are you going?"

"I'm not sure yet." That was a lie.

"So you don't know where you're going, but you've thought about leaving for a while, and you didn't tell me because you thought I would stop you? That sounds like bullshit to me, Levi. Either something just came up, or you know exactly where you're going." 

I didn't know what to respond with. I hated when she called me out on my bullshit, because it always caught me off guard.

"You're going... _there_ , aren't you? Why?"

"Hanji, I have to leave. I'm sorry." I got up from the table and walked into the bedroom, grabbing my bags, and walked towards the door. She sat there at the table, stoic and unresponsive. 

"Tell me why, before you leave." 

I took a deep breath and decided that if I didn't tell her, she'd end up hating me. I knew if I explained it to her, she would be mad, but she'd get over it. She wouldn't support my decision, but she'd understand.

"I can't get past second place if I stand still, Hanji. He'll just keep passing me up. I can't just stand here waiting for it to be my turn without giving anything first."

I walked out the door and saw the cab waiting for me. I let out a relieved sigh. Sitting in front of her apartment after leaving would've been awkward. I handed the cab driver the slip of paper with the address written on it and threw my bags into the back seat. 

"Switchin' sides of town, eh kid?" The cab driver made me want to just walk. His breath smelled like a horrible combination of cheap alcohol and cigarettes and his car smelled like fried chicken and body odor. If I didn't feel the need to be at the least, civil, I probably wouldn't have responded. It was a valid question, though. Hanji was still a poor college kid, and when I say poor, I mean poor. It probably looked pretty sketchy coming from Hanji's house. 

We pulled up to the drive way and the cab driver sat in awe. I got my bags out, handed him the fare, and walked to the door. I gave it a good knock and waited.

And waited.

And waited.

I knocked again, this time harder and longer. I heard a door shut and some shouting and knew someone was coming. 

The door opened and before I knew it I saw a girl with jet black hair and watering eyes and a boy with brown hair and a wide open mouth standing before me.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> God this took so long. Sorry guys. I've been preparing for college auditions and school and stuff has just been eorighreoge. I had writers block for a while and was waiting for some motivation but I realized it wasn't coming so I just wrote it. Sorry for it being so shallow. It seems kind of pointless, but I really wanted to show that without something to motivate Levi (Eren), he doesn't even have the capability to clean up after himself. So yeah, there ya' go. They'll be coming out faster after this, promise!


	14. Chapter 14

I set his bags down beside the mattress on the floor and shut the door behind me. I stood and watched him, methodically unpacking his clothes, color coding them the way he had always done. It was as if he had never left. Levi still knew my house as well as he had before. He walked out of the room to the hall closet and came back with his favorite sheets and comforter and made his bed, fluffing his pillows and leaning them against the wall. He counted them, realizing he only had four, and went to go get a fifth. No matter where he slept, he always had to have five pillows. It had been so long since he was here, and now that he was back, it was as if I were dreaming. Everything he did seemed so familiar.

"Well, everything is settled, the only thing I need now is some new band posters."

"We kept them." 

He spun around and gave me a face that said "I know you mean "I" instead of "we", and I did. Mikasa insisted on throwing them away, thinking he would never come back, but I couldn't just let go of them. 

"Where are they?"

"They're in my closet, rolled up."

He scoffed, ran downstairs and returned with the posters. He hung them up in the exact same spot he had put them before.

I looked around the room when he was finished and felt a wave of deja vu sweep over me. I had been in this room so many times, watching him clean or hang his clothes. Everything he did was methodical and calm, one of the few times I've ever seen Levi look serene. 

He walked past me, heading for the door again, but I caught his wrist and he stopped in his tracks. I don't know what came over me, but all of a sudden I just needed to touch him. 

The memory of his kiss rushed through me like a wave and suddenly I needed more. I needed to feel that again. I needed to feel _him_ again. 

We stood there for a moment, my other arm wrapped around his waist. As we were standing there, I felt another wave of want for him and tangled my fingers in his soft black hair. I kissed him as deeply and passionately as I could. 

I wasn't worried about Jean or the guilt I would feel after this. All I was worried about was the feeling of his lips against mine, so incredibly soft, and the taste of green tea and stale cigarettes on his tongue just like the first time we kissed. I couldn't think while I was kissing him, I could only feel his hands running through my hair and his tongue voraciously forcing its way into my mouth.

His hand loosened its grip on my hair and he slowly pulled away from my mouth. I wanted more, but I could tell he wanted it to stop there, so I let go of him. 

"Uh..." I couldn't find words. I didn't know what to say. I wanted to ask him why he came back, or what took him so long, or where he went, but I couldn't. I couldn't say anything. 

"Cat got your tongue?" 

"No, but I wish you did..." He spun around and looked at me and I felt my face flush with red. That was _so_ cheesy. 

He smiled, slipped back into my arms, and kissed me again. When I prodded his lips with my tongue, he caught it between his teeth. 

"Happy?" I nodded, feeling an all too familiar warmth going from my stomach down to my groin. This needed to stop here. I wanted more, but I knew all it would bring was sadness and guilt, so I walked out of the room and into my own.

I laid in bed for a couple of hours and thought about Jean and Levi. I thought about the type of person Jean was. I weighed the pros and cons of Jean and what I did and didn't like about him, but there wasn't much to dislike. In short, Jean was pretty much the perfect boyfriend. We rarely fought, and when we did, it was always because of a misunderstanding and was resolved quickly. On the other hand, Levi and I almost always fought, and when we did, we held grudges for days. 

It was then that I realized what each of them was to me: Jean was a perfect, comfortable love that was warm and you could almost tangibly feel its heat encasing its arms around you. It wrapped you in bliss and was soft and soothing. If it were to be painted, it would be a painting of two adults in a comfortable suburban house, drinking coffee around the table and eating breakfast together. It would be full of yellows and browns and the lighting would be magnificent, casting a golden light on the pair. Jean and I were the ideal relationship, one that most people wished for to be happy, and I had it. 

Levi, on the other hand, was the love that was violent and passionate and made you hate yourself and your partner for days on end. It made you stand your ground even when you knew you were wrong and it shook you to the bone. If you weren't ready for it, it would destroy you, and sometimes I contemplated whether I wanted it to pick me apart piece by piece or if I would hold my own against the incredible strength of such a savage love.

I realized then that I would have to choose one of them, and the weight of that choice hung on my shoulders like the weight of the world.


	15. Chapter 15

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WOW GUYS HEY I MISSED YOU I'M SO SORRY. A lot of shit has been happening these past couple of months. I'm working two jobs, going to school, and then giving music lessons on the side of that. MY COMPUTER ALSO BROKE but I got a new one for Christmas so yay! I've been gone from this so long, its going to take a while for me to pick the momentum back up and get back into my regular style, so I apologize if this is not what you were expecting/completely different from the rest of the work. I decided I wanted to milk you guys as long as possible, so be prepared for some stuff. LOVE U x

It felt fucking good to be home. I don't know what I was thinking, leaving this place. I don't think I will ever consider something home unless Eren is next to me. That realization came to me when I was falling asleep in my old bed. When I was with Hanji, it took me hours. When I was in _my_ bed, it took minutes, seconds even. I was so tired. I was so, so tired of feeling like something was missing. For seven months, I pretended like I didn't need them. I pretended that the only thing that fueled my love for Eren was my groin and it was a shallow love, but that gross story in my head made me feel so guilty. Eren was so much more than that.

"Levi, get up. Breakfast is ready." I groaned and rolled over to check the time on my alarm. It was 7:40 so Eren had probably gotten back from his run. The thought of seeing him sprung me out of bed and into the kitchen. On the table were waffles, pancakes, grits, and any type of fruit you could want. Mikasa was smiling, pouring Armin and Jean a drink.

Wait.

Jean.

Fuck.

The moment our eyes met my heart collapsed into my stomach. It didn't even occur to me that he would be here for breakfast. It was a tuesday, so Eren would be driving him to school.

"What the fuck, Eren." Jean's voice was so cold it made me gulp. By this time, Jean probably had so much of a hold on Eren that Eren would die for him.

Eren turned around and his face turned white. He hadn't anticipated Jean and I meeting so quickly after he and I had kissed last night. He was stumbling for words, his eyes begging Mikasa to help him. She got the hint pretty quickly.

"I saw Levi at work yesterday and begged him to come back, and it worked. He got here last night, Jean." She poured orange juice over Jean's shoulder and into his cup, hoping that her words had at least somewhat soothed him.

They didn't.

"I didn't ask you, Mikasa. I asked Eren, didn't I? I want Eren to say why he's here." Eren's eyes shot straight to mine and mine shot straight to the ground.

"Jean, stop. This is Levi's home. I don't owe you an explanation of why he's here. He belongs in this house just as much as you do."

My eyes went back to Eren's. I didn't see it at first, but Eren was shaking with rage, but not at me.

"This is not his home, Eren." Jean's voice was shaking as much as Eren's whole body was. Something that was kept inside for a long time was about to explode. I had a feeling they would be late for school.

I couldn't do anything but stand and watch at the fight that unfolded. Neither could Mikasa or Armin, for that matter. All three of us stood as still as a statue and watched the two of them fight. It was terrifying. Neither of them would raise their voice. Neither of them would give up.

"Who are you, Jean, to say who's house this is? Is this your house? No. Do you live here? No. Have you ever lived here? No." I had to do a double take at what Eren said next.  
"You never will, either, if you keep fucking acting like this."

"Acting like what? A rational person? I know you love him, Eren. The same way I love Marco. But neither of those relationships are good for us. _We're_ good for us. Not him."

Eren fucking lost it.

"How do you know what's good for me, Jean? How? Please, enlighten me. Enlighten me on how you know that I love Levi. Enlighten me on how you know what a theoretical relationship with Levi would be like. Enlighten me on how you know anything at all about Levi. Please. You've never trusted him around me. And you know what that tells me? You've never trusted me to be able to hold my own against him. This entire relationship has been a game of keep Eren away from Levi. That's all it's ever been, hasn't it? I don't know anything about Marco, but the way you're acting sure sounds a lot like what you've described. Now I know why you two didn't work out very well. You felt like he was restraining you. Well you know what? That's what _I_ feel like right now."

Jean was silent for a few moments, and so was everyone else. The only sound that was audible was Eren's heavy breathing.

"I'm sorry. Eren's right. Levi, this is your home. It was your home before I even knew Eren, and it will always be your home, and I'm just going to have to accept that." He rose from the table and grabbed his bag. "Eren, I'll text you later. I don't think I'm going to be making it to school today." With that, Jean left.

* * *

None of them went to school that day. Armin and Mikasa stayed upstairs and watched TV all day. Eren went on another run, in the opposite direction of Jean's house, to cool off some steam. I went downstairs and took a bath in Eren's bathroom. That damn Jacuzzi was wonderful. 

After about thirty minutes, I heard Eren's door open and close. "Yo, Eren, heads up, I'm taking a bath. Don't come in." He completely ignored my warning and barged right into the bathroom. He stared at me for a second, shook his head, and went back into his room. I heard his old bed springs creak under his weight and I drained the water and dried off. 

"Are you okay?" 

"No."

"Do you want to talk about it?"

"Not really." 

"You've really let your room go." I didn't have any room to talk. Hanji's apartment was much worse, but he didn't know that, and he didn't need to. I didn't want him to know what his absence had done to me. 

"I didn't have my maid to clean up after me." I heard a little bit of a laugh at the end of that sentence and looked to see a smirk on his face. I sat at the edge of the bed and brushed his hair out of his eyes.

"Levi, please don't. Please. It seems every time I'm emotionally compromised, you're here, and twice its ended with me feeling like a dick. I don't know if I can handle that a third time." 

What he said was true, but that didn't make it hurt less. It was my own doing, my own fault, and looking back on it, it was pretty shitty. I realized the only time I had been able to slip my way into Eren's mouth was when he was easiest to manipulate. That was pretty fucked up. I needed a better tactic.

I left his room without a word and went back up to mine. Putting on some clothes, I laid in my bed and thought about how I could get Eren to leave Jean. I didn't want to be sneaky about it. I didn't want to make their relationship end on a bad note. I wanted to be able to catch Eren from the end of their relationship and slowly lift him back to his feet, but I didn't want to be the cause of it. 

I figured I would try something I'd never done before. It was so simple, but it had never even occurred to me. I would just treat Eren like he were mine without the physicality of it. I would treat him as if we were together, with all the kindness and affection and adoration I could muster, but not touch him until Jean and Eren were done. I didn't know how long it would take until I seemed like the most desperate mother fucker in the world, but that's what I was. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ALSO HEY GUYS I'm working on something about Ymir/Christa and it's pretty cheesy, so if you're into that pairing and cheesy stories about lesbians then check it out at my other account potatoslut! There're only two chapters right now, but I have a whole timeline ready for them so writing should be a breeze. (that's one of the problems I had with this, is my timeline ran out so I had writers block oops)


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